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Getting inside a Jane Helslander painting is an experience that transcends such academic parameters as perspective and transparency. Helslander's surfaces may be planar, her mediums opaque, and her compositions unrelated to perspective, yet her paintings almost drag one into them and compel one to dance with them. The overriding impression is that one is being involved, surrounded, and moved.

Asymmetric flow is at the heart of every image. Circular forms wheel and turn, overlap and fly apart in response to alternating centrifugal and magnetic forces. They project a dynamic balance that is poised to let them swoop and topple and spin before they once again ease into equilibrium.

Helslander's inspiration is the ceaseless drift and flux of nature in all its forms. She spends a great deal of time quietly observing phenomena that range from the ripples in a pool of water to the near-immobility of rock formations; from snowstorms, swirling in the light of street lamps, to the calm of distant horizons. Her art gets deeply into the clockwork of nature's organic machinery; it is concerned with the chemical strings that make up all matter, and it tracks the random patterns that keep the world in constant motion. It amplifies the organ-grinder tunes of daily existence, and it picks up the faintest whisper of life at a cellular level.

These ideas do not make themselves immediately apparent. Rather, they emerge a little at a time over the course of an hour or a lifetime. Each canvas can be enjoyed solely for its emotional beauty, but each rewards further thought as well. Helslander is an educated artist who studies constantly and is mindful of the influence of the great art of the past, and she incorporates universal concerns into the most abstract frameworks. She holds an MFA and teaches art at the university level, and she has exhibited her work in museum invitational exhibitions as well as in top galleries and regional shows. Among her honors are commissions from Neiman-Marcus and from the new Terminal D at the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport. For that commission, she created a floor mosaic in a round format. To stand on it is to experience the sensation of walking on water and creating ripples - a pleasant and sensual preface to boarding an aircraft and taking flight.

Helslander lays down a symphony of circles and then adds and subtracts elements until the image resolves itself. An admitted audiophile, she attends concerts and jazz performances, relishing the interaction between musicians. She can almost see the sound patterns that radiate outward, and she relishes the electricity that the audience absorbs. The notes that register on her ear are translated onto canvas as marks that loop and overlap, appear and disappear, and resound with Doppler echoes.

Helslander's process uncovers layer after layer of kinetic inference, a phenomenon she refers to as "field presence." With hypnotic energy and vibrant authority, these works lead the viewer to discover circles within circles, the beating pulse of nature, the thing within the thing.

Jane Helslander's works can be seen permanently at the International Terminal at DFW Airport via a dazzling thirty foot diameter terrazzo floor medallion commissioned by DFW Airport. Michael Lash, Director of Public Arts for Chicago, chose Helslander for inclusion in New American Paintings. Her works are also included in the Neiman Marcus Collection and numerous private collections. Helslander's works have been exhibited at the Longview Museum, the Arlington Museum of Art, the Waco Art Center, the Haggar Gallery at the University of Dallas, the Moudy Gallery at Texas Christian University, and The Gallery at UTA.

Gallery Hours:
Tuesday through Friday 10am-5:30pm
Saturday 11am-4pm
and by appointment

Please contact Pam or Bill Campbell at wcca@flash.net or at 817-737-9566 for more information.