For most painters, process is about manipulating their paints to achieve a desired result. While that is obviously a major part of the magic that happens when Tiverton-based artist Jennifer Jones Rashleigh puts brush to canvas, for her, the process is a little more collaborative.

She listens to the paint, and lets it tell her what it wants to do.

“Abstract expressionists were known for letting paint be paint,” she said. “Sometimes I water down my surface, or I wash the canvas and that softens it; here I’ve layered with a gel coat and created a thick surface, and here I’ve watered the first layer down and then layered paint on top,” she said of two of the dozens and dozens of canvases on the walls of her sun-filled second-floor studio and gallery at Tiverton Four corners.

“Sometimes a canvas is so wet I’ll even spin it,” she said, of one of the many wave paintings that figure prominently in her repertoire. “It’s so physical. I’ve got to paint flat when I’m doing that,” she said, admitting that the first time she tried that in the second floor of the historic home at 3879 Main Road that houses her gallery, she got a bit of a surprise. “This is an old house! I had to support the painting to make sure gravity was going in the right way.”

“It’s the paint doing what paint does and moving with the physics of water,” she said. “I love allowing paint to fulfill its possibilities.”

Collaborating with clients, too

An artist who is receptive enough to allow her paint to have a voice is, you might imagine, receptive to the ideas of her clients — and these days, the majority of her work is commission-based. She’s currently working on something that’s a little different from much of her portfolio: botanicals that are primarily two colors, with a touch of gold leaf. She had already created a series of black and white botanticals when a client asked for something similar, but different.

“I usually can’t get out of the rainbow,” Jennifer said. “So this is fun. I went in her (client’s) house and we discussed size and panels, and she wanted something that would pick up the blue and gold in her home. She liked the contrast so much; it is a technique I’ve been wanting to try. And I threw in a touch of gold leaf. It’s been a fun project, and she’s been a key player as to how I’ve proceeded.”

Typically when a client comes in and asks for a wave painting, for example, Jennifer will ask if they have a particular image in mind and, when practical, she may make a trip to the beach that client was thinking of. Still, she missed the walk-in traffic that all but vanished in the 2020 high season. “Right now I have a long list of commissions. It’s normally so quiet this time of year but with the new year and new season we are all very hopeful.”

Creating with color

“I can mix any color, and that’s fun for me because it’s automatic,” she said. “I can look at a bit of blue, like this one,” she said, holding up a bright hue in a plastic bottle, “and I know I can get from here to there by adding purple and burnt sienna, which you wouldn’t think would make navy.”

She keeps the palettes of the rainbow of hues used in each painting or series, mostly in repurposed clear plastic chocolate boxes with the now-dry but still very vibrant colors distinct and visible from the outside. Each is labeled with a color copy of the image created with that palette. “They are beautiful in their own abstract way,” said Jennifer. “I save them because people have been asking for them, but I also save them for myself.”

Blues feature prominently in Jennifer’s palettes, for a good reason. “I grew up in the high desert of western Colorado, and I miss the desert, the dry arid air and the blue, blue skies,” she said. It may seem counterintuitive, but painting the ocean has served her well as a stand-in for her longing for the endless blue sky of the west. “Water is so mercurial, with so many personalities,” she said. “It’s so much fun painting water because there’s this synthesis — on the one hand, I’m doing something representational, but there’s this abstraction. You bring it down to these minute elements that are completely abstract.”

One thing you don’t expect in Jennifer’s palettes of the ocean — but is almost always there — are the various shades of red she uses to create foundational depth. In one, she even uses neon pink. “It’s a weird thing, because you don’t expect to see red underpainting, I wanted to move away from the all-blue palette. I do this most of the time I’m painting water, unless the client really only wants blue and white.”

When she’s working on a large canvas, Jennifer, who writes with her left hand but plays tennis with her right, actually paints with both hands at the same time. “My gross motor is here,” she said, making bold strokes at the waterline with her right had, while highlighting whitecaps with her left.

Another unique quality of Jennifer’s relationship to her artwork is how she hopes her clients will experience it. Picking up one of the many pillows in her gallery, both hand-painted and printed, she gives it a squeeze. “I do these pillows because I love the fact that you can totally possess a piece of art. When you are holding it you are as close as you can get — and you can touch acrylics and it’s okay.” Her pillows are, in fact, completely machine washable, so holding her art is not a one-time proposition.

Coming full circle

“I have always made things; as a kid I would turn anything into an art project,” said Jennifer. “Growing up in western Colorado I did not have much access to museums.” She was not exposed to much art until she enrolled at the University of Colorado for fine art, yet it was at that point that she unknowingly took a bit of a detour from destiny. “I did not want to be a naive artist, so I started to take art history, and it just snowballed academically.”

“In my family it was fine to be a doctor, it was fine to be an accountant, it was fine to be a professor, so I started aiming for academics.” The next several years would include bachelors and masters degrees, a year in Europe, and a 2-year program studying the Italian Rennaissance and the scientific method of Leonardo DaVinci as it applied to his painting.

She was accepted to a doctorate program at Brown where she switched to Spanish studies and traveled to Seville on a Fulbright scholarship. It was there that she experienced an unexpected revelation. While studying an artist who was active during the Spanish Inquisition, whose job it was to dictate to other artists how Christ or the Virgin Mary were to be depicted, Jennifer realized she was watching the clock, looking forward to leaving for her coffee break.

“I thought, Wait a minute, what am I doing? This is the dream,” she said.

Returning to the U.S., she was working on her thesis when, on Sept. 11, 2001, her husband traveled to New York for work. “He was fine, we were fine, but during the day I asked myself, if life goes back to where it was when he left home at 4 a.m., where do I want to be?”

“So I terminated my studies, had another baby, and started painting all the time.”

“I was meant to be doing this and I have so many ideas, so many things I want to work on,” Jennifer said. “I still drink coffee, but I don’t stop to drink it, I drink it to keep going. This is what I want to be doing, and I don’t ever want to leave.”

Find Jennifer Jones Rashleigh and all her colors at Cedian Painting, 3879 Main Road, 2nd floor, Tiverton; 401/951-0696; www.cedianpainting.com.