When Jane Sinclair left her native Australia and moved to New York City with her husband, she left behind her career as a graphic designer. When you’re in your forties, it requires a great deal of strength and determination to start fresh on a new path — and Sinclair is packed with both.
“I’ve always wanted to get back to painting,” she says, remembering her practice from her college years. Sinclair decided to take it upon herself to open her first exhibition in the heart of the Lower East Side’s rich art neighborhood on the Bowery. “It’s such a treat seeing the works with so much space around them.”
Sinclair took a windowless studio in Tribeca and started creating paintings representing her memories of buildings she has a connection with — such as a painting entitled “Carlton,” representing the Carlton Hotel. Only the titles anchor the works in reality; each painting exists in a world of geometric abstraction.
Architecture has long inspired great abstract painters such as Ellsworth Kelly, who in his early days used photography to record architectural elements whose forms he reproduced on canvas in solid colors. Asked about her favorite artists from the genre, Sinclair answered: “Carmen Herrera, because she was so precise and exact.” Sinclair works in acrylic on canvas and wood, and her colors mirror the palette of Herrera and other minimalists such as Aurelie Nemours and Josef Albers — outlined triangles boxed inside polygons, in line with classic geometric abstraction.
Jane Sinclair, “Memories of Things I’ve Seen” @ 208 Bowery · June 2018