If there’s one word that defines Jane Gottlieb as an artist, it’s color. From her earliest days as a painter, through her exploration of photography and digital manipulation, Gottlieb has made color not just a tool, but the very essence of her work. Her approach to art has evolved over the years, but the core principle remains: she is a colorist who uses color to craft a world of her own, a world brimming with vivid, fantastical hues and shapes that captivate both the eye and the mind.
The Beginnings of a Colorist
Gottlieb’s love affair with color started at a young age. She began painting as a child, instinctively drawn to the power of shapes and colors to convey emotion and beauty. Her early works were grounded in traditional painting, but her artistic journey soon took a detour into the world of photography. In the 1980s, before Photoshop and digital editing were widely accessible, Gottlieb began experimenting with hand-painted photographic prints. Using Cibachrome prints—known for their rich, saturated colors—she hand-painted each image, infusing it with an unrealistic, dreamlike quality that was both bold and imaginative.
At a time when digital manipulation was not yet a tool in the artist’s toolkit, Gottlieb found a way to push the boundaries of reality by incorporating unnatural, vivid hues into her photos. This was not about photographic accuracy, but about creating a world of heightened beauty, a place where color was free to exist beyond the constraints of nature.
A Unique Fusion of Photography and Painting
For over 35 years, Gottlieb has continued to blend her two passions: photography and painting. In addition to hand-painting her photographic prints, she began scanning her one-of-a-kind works and pairing them with Kodachrome transparencies taken from her extensive travels around the globe. With each scan, she unlocked new possibilities for creative enhancement, using Photoshop to mix, combine, and amplify the colors, textures, and compositions in her images.
Her library of Kodachrome color transparencies, amassed over five decades of traveling the world, serves as a visual journal of her journeys. These photographs—capturing everything from vibrant street scenes to serene landscapes—serve as the canvas for her imaginative interventions. Through Photoshop, Gottlieb can take a simple photograph and transform it into something otherworldly, a piece of art that transcends the limitations of time, place, and reality. The result is a series of works that blend the past with the present, the real with the fantastical.
A Retro-Modern Aesthetic
Gottlieb’s use of color has often been described as retro-modern, with a particular nod to the 1980s aesthetic. This is evident in her architectural works, where buildings and cityscapes are bathed in unexpected, electrifying hues—magenta pinks, electric yellows, rich purples, and deep blues. These pieces carry an undeniable retro vibe, reminiscent of the bold, graphic design elements that were popular in the 1980s, but they also possess a timeless quality that feels fresh and relevant today.
There’s a sense of nostalgia in Gottlieb’s work, but it’s not nostalgic in the traditional sense. Rather than looking back to recreate the past, she uses color and form to construct a visual world that feels both futuristic and nostalgic at the same time. Her architecture, often appearing both organic and geometric, takes on a surreal quality, like a scene from a dream or a memory refracted through a prism of saturated color.
The Power of Color
At the heart of Gottlieb’s work is her exceptional understanding of color. She has a rare gift for using color not only to enhance form but to imbue each piece with emotion and energy. As one critic wrote, Gottlieb’s art “challenges both the mind and the eye.” The colors in her work are never arbitrary—they are the driving force behind the composition, shaping the mood, atmosphere, and interpretation of each piece.
The colors she chooses are not mere decoration or superficial embellishment. They are integral to the form, giving her works depth, meaning, and life. In her pieces, color is a language unto itself—one that speaks of joy, wonder, and a sense of infinite possibility. Gottlieb’s ability to place color in unexpected ways—boldly contrasting bright yellows with deep purples, or pairing vibrant pinks with cool blues—creates a tension and harmony that is visually arresting and emotionally evocative.
A Visionary Artist
Gottlieb’s work goes beyond simple aesthetic enjoyment. It challenges viewers to rethink how they perceive the world around them. By using color to bend the rules of reality, she invites us into a universe of “unparalleled wonders”—a place where anything is possible, where the line between the real and the imagined is intentionally blurred.
Her works speak to a deep understanding of the natural world, yet they are also firmly rooted in a kind of fantasy. It’s a world where architecture glows with impossible colors, where the land and sky meet in shades that don’t exist in nature, and where each piece offers an escape into something more vibrant and exuberant than our everyday lives.
In a world where art often veers toward minimalism or abstraction, Jane Gottlieb stands apart as a master of color and imagination, crafting a reality that is both bold and beautiful. Her work doesn’t just showcase color—it celebrates it, using it as a tool to create a visual experience that is as thought-provoking as it is visually stunning.
Conclusion
Jane Gottlieb’s artistry is a celebration of color in all its forms. From her early days of hand-painting photographic prints to her modern digital creations, Gottlieb has built a body of work that is as vibrant and unique as the colors she wields. Her art is a testament to the power of imagination, the beauty of the unreal, and the boundless possibilities of color to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary. Whether through retro-modern cityscapes or surreal dreamscapes, Jane Gottlieb invites us to step into a world where color knows no boundaries—and where beauty is limitless.
