Jane Harris, who has died after a short illness aged 65, was one of Britain’s most significant abstract painters. For 30 years she explored, through a set of self-imposed rules, the perceptual qualities of the ellipse. It was a shape that, in her hands, could be both ornate and Spartan, and that, through her beautiful handling of paint, could be visually mischievous. Carefully painted in oils, each of the meticulous brushstrokes that mark out her curvilinear shapes describes both a form, themselves, and a texture, which captures and reflects light.
I met Jane at Goldsmiths College, University of London (now Goldsmiths University of London) in the 1990s, when I was a student on the MA course in fine art. She had just graduated. Jane first studied art in Bournemouth, Dorset, the county in which she spent her childhood. She was born in Swanage, one of four children of George Harris, who was in the navy, and his wife, Eva (nee Armstrong).
