Japhet Bates is pleased to announce EB AND FLOW, an exhibition of paintings by artists Joanne Freeman and Audrey Stonel. An opening reception will be held on Wednesday, October 28, 2026 from 5:30 - 8:00 PM. The exhibition will be on view through November 25, 2026
Joanne Freeman's paintings and drawings reference forms found in architecture and design. She creates compositions based on loose geometry and layered saturated colors. The hard edge process of cutting shapes and layering color onto treated raw linen, recalls qualities of midcentury low-tech graphics, colorfield painting, and collage.
When applying oil paint to linen she tries to accentuate the inherent qualities of both mediums. She considers both the transparency and opacity of the colors, how they abut and overlap and how they respond to the textured tooth of the linen. The internal shapes respond directly to both the edge and external proportions of the stretcher. She works intuitively in the studio with prior works informing the process and external sources both conscious and unconscious influencing decisions.
Building on historical precedence, visual memory and the emotional residue of color, her reductive abstract paintings are about the beauty of singular color, the impact of pure abstract forms and the quiet order that cuts through the noise.
When observing shifting color and light in nature Audrey Stone finds herself paradoxically experiencing both excitement and calm, a dynamic opposition she seeks to bring into her work.
To create images that are simultaneously stimulating and serene, she employs subtle gradients of color in bands of varied widths. She's excited by the way the eye and brain process the transitions from one color to the next, informing the viewer's emotional and physical response to the work.
As she creates the gradients, she is always thinking of visual pacing and rhythm: one color builds until it reaches the point where it feels fulfilled, and then another color is ready to be introduced. Although the pacing of the gradients requires measurement and mapping, those are balanced with more intuitive choices as she works, a dance of the planned and unplanned.
While she has always thought of her paintings as soft edged, since her taped transitions purposely allow for some bleed, areas of un-taped edges soften the color shifts even further. These two approaches to the gradients, reflecting her own internal dialogue about abstract painting, are interconnected and complementary, the sum being greater than each on its own. Overall, the subtle shifts in color create a feeling of the painting glowing, pulsing, and softly melting away. Color becomes a sensory experience: she feels it in her body as vibration.
Working on diptychs and multipaneled paintings as well as symmetry in the compositions themselves is a mirroring and reflection tool. However, the diptychs and multi-panel works result in multiple compositional arrangements, some are planned but often others come about which she does not always anticipate. Making the compositions involves an element of chance and is part of her internal dialogue with the concept of control and expectation in her work and beyond.
