Jane Hammond, “Purple Chaperon”, Mixed Media on Paper, 1995

A large and visually striking mixed media work on rice paper by notable New York-based American artist Jane Hammond (b. 1950), presented in a custom made frame.

Signature and title are presumably present on the reverse as they are with similar works by the artist, though we haven’t examined it outside of the frame to confirm. Our assigned title is derived from one of the most prominent elements in the piece: a hand-painted purple chaperon, the distinctive 15th century headgear worn throughout western Europe in the Middle Ages.

Said chaperon sits atop the head of a handsome hand-painted orange figure who serves as the focal point of the work. He’s surrounded by a visually cacophonous collection of assorted images and motifs that evoke a dreamlike or stream of consciousness sense of very intriguing interconnected randomness.

Canvas is off-white hand-made Japanese rice paper with a painted thin teal border delineating its somewhat irregular form that’s wider at the top than the bottom. Various mixed media techniques include painting, printing, transfers, and collage-style cutouts that are hallmarks of the artist’s distinctive and highly sought-after works from this period. For decades, it was her practice to limit all her paintings to mix-and-match selections from a total of 276 found images.

According to a 2002 New York Times article, “Ms. Hammond [aims] to make paintings ‘as complicated, inconsistent, varied, multifaceted as you are, as I am, as life is… I think my work deals very directly with the time that we live in,’ Ms. Hammond said. ‘There’s a surfeit of information, increasingly bodiless because of the computer, and I bring to this an interest in how meaning is constructed’… The best metaphor for the method behind her rollicking, erudite, street-smart, angst-ridden, encyclopedic paintings is writing.”

Presented in a custom made off-white lacquered shallow shadow box-like frame with white background and acrylic glazing by John Rowland Workshop in Detroit, Michigan. Dated “1995” on bottom right corner on the back.

Dimensions listed are of the artwork at its widest. Frame is H 43.13 in. x W 39.75. in. x D 1.25 in.