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jane richlovsky bio
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Before they became paintings, the pieces of fabric I paint on had lives of their own. They were tablecloths, curtains, slipcovers, and other artifacts of domesticity. I leave revealed the patterned fabric in the shape of a person’s clothing or an object in their environment, and integrate it into the rendered space of the painting with painted shadows and reflections. I push the tension between the exaggerated depth of the space and the flatness of the pattern. I often make the pattern into both a near and a faraway object in the same painting, the resulting scale shift creating further tension.
The raw material for my images is the distorted reflections of American life in propaganda from the Second World War and its aftermath. I am especially inspired by the images that formed and promoted the protean feminine ideal, intended at one juncture to inspire women to sign on to the war effort, and later to entice them back home. I explore the relationship of these mythical yet ordinary figures to their mythical yet ordinary surroundings, overwhelming them with heavy machinery, or with heavily flocked wallpaper. I often crop them closely and leave room for what you don’t see. I find larger patterns in their surroundings that counterpoint the patterns that they are painted on.
The patterned surfaces underlying the images bind the figures inextricably to their surroundings, the physical objects of their times and places. Whether making the machinery of war, or tending the “modern” electric home-fires of an uneasy peace, my women continue their relentless activity. Whether they are liberating themselves from the strictures of the patterns they are made of, or binding themselves more tightly to them, I leave to the viewer.
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