Jolene Dames — Fine Artist
Artist Statement
My painting practice is grounded in perception, surface, and response.
I was trained as a scenic artist, where the work is not about developing a singular style, but about learning how to see — how to assess what a space, surface, or narrative requires, and how to bring it into form. That training continues to shape my fine art practice, allowing me to move fluidly across imagery, scale, and material while remaining coherent.
Rather than working from a fixed visual language, I approach each painting as a perceptual problem. Color, texture, and mark emerge through attention and response, guided by the relationship between intuition and structure. What unifies the work is not subject matter, but decision-making — how each painting arrives at clarity through its own internal logic.
Much of my work is executed at a physical distance, often using a three-foot extension brush — a tool borrowed from scenic painting that requires the body to step back, see the whole, and work through gesture rather than control. This distance sharpens perception and keeps the work responsive to the full field rather than the surface alone.
My paintings often carry a sense of navigation or orientation, not as a prescribed theme, but as an ongoing investigation into how meaning forms through surface, how order emerges from complexity, and how paintings can function as environments rather than images.
Working in the entertainment industry for over two decades refined my technical skills and taught me how to bring visions to life with intention. Whether shaping large-scale environments or creating intimate works of art, my approach is grounded in transformation — translating raw materials into forms that carry meaning, emotion, and presence.
That discipline remains central to my studio practice today.
Artist Bio
Jolene Dames is a painter whose work is shaped by a background in scenic art and design, where adaptability, surface literacy, and perceptual clarity are foundational skills. With over 25 years of experience painting and designing environments for film, television, theater, and public spaces, she brings a disciplined yet responsive approach to her fine art practice.
Her paintings move across abstraction, reference, texture, and symbol, unified by a consistent method of inquiry rather than a fixed aesthetic. Dames approaches each work as a perceptual problem, allowing form, color, and material to emerge through attentive decision-making.
This practice reflects her belief that artistic voice is not defined by repetition of style, but by coherence of perception. Her work is collected and exhibited as part of an ongoing exploration of how paintings can function as intentional environments — objects that hold presence, complexity, and orientation over time.
She is the founder of Made by Dames™, a studio practice dedicated to intentional, one-of-a-kind paintings and objects, and Skewed North Studio, where her broader perceptual work across art, story, and space takes form.