About The Artist

Jill Goldman-Callahan is a contemporary abstract painter interested in mystery and process. She earned a BA in Fine Art and Anthropology from Bennington College and a Masters in Art Therapy from Lesley University. She has worked as an art therapist, art educator and studio artist. Jill’s paintings have been shown in multiple juried & solo shows. People who have them in their homes say they lend meaning to their lives. You can find Jill experimenting in her studio at the Arts Umbrella In Concord Ma.

My aim is not just to depict, but to bestow. I aspire to the voice of an echo, the memory of stone, the secrets of water. My paintings infuse the room with peaceful presence. Thomas Moore, the best selling author of Care Of The Soul, describes her work as, “Not a painting of, but a peek into.”

My art references internal rather than external reality. Intentionally ambiguous, my work is reminiscent of landscape, seeds or vessels. My paintings are process, rather than product oriented. This means, when I begin, I don’t know what will happen. Instead of a plan, I follow a series of impulses spurred on by alternating dissatisfaction and enchantment. I persevere until it feels right. 

I build surfaces responsively, intuitively evolving each piece with coalescing layers that infuse an anodyne presence. My surfaces, spread like icing, or dripped across a tilted plane live at the intersection of intent and accident. I rarely use a brush, instead choosing squeegees to glide, push and pull paint. I once worked as a pastry chief and love rich paint the consistency of buttercream. 

I make many of my own pigments, walnut ink is birthed when boiled overnight, hammered desert stones relinquish residue, their pink powder permeating liquid poured across a plane. Marinated crushed coffee beans exude textured browns and ash from my home fire generates graceful grays. The layered patina reads as atmospheric, seed like or geologic, a salient whisper to ourselves. 

People often exhale when they enter my studio.  Mood is as important to me as narrative. My calming compositions and peaceful palette offer a meditative invitation. Each painting is an authentic new world, a mirror or portal, a constructed recording of moments of pure responsiveness. Ultimately, I just make paintings that I want to see.