Jin Hale

My paintings begin with repeated light events: circles, flares, halos, and the residue of things that stay in the eye after the source is gone. I am interested in repetition not as pattern alone, but as a psychological condition. A repeated form can become ceremonial, annoying, tender, or unstable depending on how long it is held in place. In the studio I work slowly through layers of pigment, translucent resin, and sanding, allowing glow to behave as a material rather than an effect. The resulting fields are less about depiction than duration. I want a painting to register first as atmosphere, and only afterwards as structure. The work asks how memory behaves when it is bright, partial, and impossible to fix completely.