About the artist:

Based in New York City, Paul Jansen (born August 19, 1945, in Boston, Massachusetts) graduated from the Fine Arts Department at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. After receiving postgraduate awards and scholarships, Jansen was recognized for his innate technique and began his career as a freelance illustrator. Shortly thereafter, Jansen emerged as one of the most inventive independent artists in the nation, and served as Residence Artist at Jimi Hendrix’ Electric Lady Recording Studios in New York City. Jansen’s work has appeared in Rolling Stone Magazine, The Village Voice, and Playboy, and includes album cover designs for Jimi Hendrix’ “War Heroes” and “Loose Ends”, and Henry McCullough’s “Mind Your Own Business!” which was nominated for Album Cover of the Year Award, London, England. Comprised of brilliantly colored, abstract configurations that reflect the conventional ideas of classical painting, Jansen’s heightened perspectives portray intensity and sensuality, unlike anything else in modern painting. From ribbon-like forms to fantasies of color, Jansen confidently pushes and fulfills the making of a truly unique and intricate artist. Jansen may render several connecting interstices or curved forms with strange volumes which cast shadows across the canvass. Whatever he puts his hand to, the results are always inventive. The artist's graceful, ribbon-like forms are swollen with sensuality as they appear from some space outside of the canvass and loom across the picture plane, weaving and interweaving in against themselves. These works are pure invention, unlike anything else now in painting. They cannot be grouped with any school of thought, as Jansen is an independent artist who has chosen to observe but not participate in re- cent trends, preferring to state his own ideas rather than be absorbed by any group. Jansen uses space in a most original way. For most painters, abstract shapes function in one plane. Jansen, however, models his shapes. Because he graduates the tones in his shapes from light to dark, and because they cast shadows, they are no longer perceived as two-dimensional shapes, but as volumes. Jansen uses abstract configurations reflecting the conventional ideas of classi.- cal painting as a model. And so in spite of the strangeness of his shapes, or rather volumes, he is in reality an essentially tradi- tional artist. For one, his paintings indicate foreground and background, and two, the underpinnings or structure of his canvasses use color as tone. His serial paintings are his least "classical" pieces. Jansen's billowing forms are extremely suggestive as they weave across the sur- face. In some paintings the canvass becomes increasingly complex and inter- esting as the viewer perceives first one con- figuration then another and still another. Jansen's forms are always circular. He is utterly absorbed by the endless variation of arcs and circle fragments which swerve and gain momentum, coil-like, as they seem to move across the picture surface, filled with a latent tension and power. Jansen is an unusual and interesting artist who deals with paradoxes and combines old and new ideas in a body of work which is utterly original. Exhibitions 1979 Court Hill Gallery, New York 1976 Stamford Public Library, Stamford, Connecticut 1974 Razor Gallery, New York 1972 Durer Gallery, San Francisco 1971 Berkeley Museum, Berkeley, California Leopold Gallery, Berkeley, California 1970 Visual Arts Gallery, New York (two-man show)