At 87, artist Virginia Jaramillo cites two pivotal influences on her stunningly minimalist painting. The first: a high school art class trip to the 20,000-square-foot workshop in Venice, California where Charles and Ray Eames designed their modernist masterpieces. “Some of the kids weren’t interested in a field trip there, but I was really anxious to go,” says Jaramillo, an El Paso-born Mexican American. She absorbed important principles — “Form follows function, if it isn’t necessary, take it out, don’t gild the lily.”
The second childhood influence: a love of science fiction. “Around 12, I used to wait for the paperback [sci-fi] magazine every month at the Thrifty Drug Store in our neighbourhood,” recalls Jaramillo. “Even today, when I hear a scientific conversation with a formula, like quantum entanglement — the term quantum — I readily see the image in my mind.”
On a cold late April afternoon in her Long Island studio, Jaramillo is showing me 10 new abstract canvases, the Point Omega series, for her solo Frieze New York art fair presentation with Hales Gallery (they and Pace represent her globally). Wafer-thin undulating lines and vivid colour fields are signature Jaramillo, but the size surprises me. “What you see here is really the first in a very long time, where I’ve worked on a smaller scale for actual paintings,” she explains. “It was difficult to backtrack 40-something years to do these. I started looking at sketches I made from the ’70s one day and said, ‘Wow, these are still very informative,’ which led to the work.”
