With Sea Legs, American artist Jane LaFarge Hamill returns to St Barth with a vibrant new series of abstract paintings, presented at Space Gallery St Barth from November 5, 2026.

The artist Jane LaFarge Hamill, and her painting Sea Legs 9, 2026, Pigment dispersion on canvas
48 x 32 in (121.92 x 81.28 cm)

Rich in movement and emotion, her canvases unfold in sweeping, fluid brushstrokes, where deep plums, magentas and soft pinks collide with flashes of chartreuse, slate blue and turquoise. Layers of colour overlap, dissolve and intertwine, creating an almost sculptural sense of rhythm and depth. Both spontaneous and carefully composed, the works evoke the shifting sensations of the sea, the warmth of the Caribbean and the delicate balance between movement and stillness.

For L’Officiel St Barth, the artist Jane LaFarge Hamill reflects on her enduring connection to the island, the freedom of abstraction and the beauty of losing track of time.

L'Officiel: Your story with St Barth began in 2010, with an artist residency at Eden Rock Gallery. What do you remember of your first arrival on the island, and what keeps drawing you back: the light, the sea, the people, a particular place?

Jane LaFarge Hamill: My first trip here was actually in utero! My mom was visibly pregnant with me on a stay at Eden Rock in 1981. There was no hot water, and the owner was known to stand on the roof and shoot fish out of the water. Wild West stuff. My parents came back to the island every year through the early 90s with friends. And as a little kid growing up in an academic, traditional northeastern household, their stories and the photos of these trips were a mysterious peek into an alternate St. Barts life - pink monokinis and smoking cigarettes, driving around in Mokes, eating under a silk parachute with a parrot at Tamarin… I came back in 2008 on an early date with my now husband. He had just finished a painting commission for Steve Martin and on the drive down to Gustavia after delivering his work, we talked about going straight down into Gustavia to buy an engagement ring. The island has played a large role in the foundation of our relationship. There’s something about this island, being a gem of nature and a place of promise. It seems like there’s a vortex of good luck here.

L'Officiel: Sixteen years later, you return with Sea Legs at Space Gallery St Barth, after your solo show Everyone You’ve Ever Known at Space Gallery SoHo in New York in 2024. How did your relationship with Space Gallery begin, and what does it mean to you to bring this new body of work to the island?
 

Jane LaFarge Hamill: I met Natalie Clifford, the director and owner of Space Gallery, on that same first trip in 2008 when she was running the gallery at Eden Rock. It’s hard to not be in a good mood around her. She’s a buoyant force. We stayed in contact over the years until she invited me to start exhibiting with her gallery. Each trip down to the island brings perspective and clarity on life, and I think this group of new paintings matches that perspective and clarity.

L'Officiel: To find one’s sea legs is to learn to keep one’s balance aboard a boat, the body moving with the water. Where does the title come from, and how does this idea of finding one’s footing run through the nine new paintings in the show?
 

Jane LaFarge Hamill: Sea Legs is about belonging to the moment. No accounting of your day, no story about what you’ve done or what it means about who you are. Personally, I’m getting increasingly bad with time - or maybe becoming time-blind - during a period of my life when it’s never been more required and complicated with family life. For me to transition between my roles during the day feels like walking with sea legs. And so those times when I can lose track of myself, in time and in ego, are treasured. I think St Barth is a perfect place to show paintings that communicate a sense of losing track by allowing a purely aesthetic experience, because it’s a place visitors go to do just that. The making of these paintings - and the looking at them - hopefully offers a temporary suspension of the clock.

L'Officiel: The series is dominated by magentas, plums and rose pinks, cut with flashes of chartreuse, slate blue and, in Sea Legs 9, a streak of turquoise. How do you build the palette of a body of work, and did the Caribbean shape these colours?
 

Jane LaFarge Hamill: The colors I choose for my palette are inspired by their psychological effect and mood, as well as being from the natural landscape. For Sea Legs, I was thinking about coming back from being exposed on the island - for example after a day in the wind on the water, or in the sun on the beach- from the sometimes harsh conditions outdoors, and what it feels like to go inside a cool, shaded room afterwards. The plums of these paintings remind me of the feeling of going from exposed to sheltered - that transition to comfort. Your eyes adjusting, your skin cooling. The turquoise was chosen more for abstract/spacial reasons. It sits behind and in front at the same time - it’s both negative and positive space; like the sea.

L'Officiel: These works are pigment dispersion on canvas, with brushstrokes that feel both sculpted and liquid. Can you describe your process in the studio: how a painting begins, how long it stays open, and how you know it is finished?
 

Jane LaFarge Hamill: My process begins with planning out the structure of a composition, and a few days of mixing paint and testing palettes to see how colors and transparency play against one another. I mix large quantities of each color and pour them into house-painting trays, then prepare brushes. Once I begin work on the canvas, the paintings are made very fast. Partly because the speed of the brushwork imparts movement better, and partly to get out of my own head. In this way, the paintings are both carefully structured - with a planned palette and composition - and intuitive. Working fast means accidents happen, and each mark has to be made relative to the one before it. Plans change. And for brushstrokes, there’s really two kinds that I rely on. The first are like shadows of a gesture that conjure the sense of a body moving in the way that produced them. Like the residue of an action. My brushes are primarily ten inches wide, so it takes full body movement to make many of these marks. The other kind of mark blends the depth of space, so you can’t quite read the sequence in which the marks were made. ‘How did that happen?’ is something I want to ask myself when I look at my own work. If I can make something beyond my own ability to replicate it, that feels great. The mark lives it’s own life.

L'Officiel: Your paintings are often described as emotionally dense. You trained at the Slade and at the New York Academy of Art, a school rooted in the figurative tradition. What led you to abstraction, and what can it express that the figure cannot?
 

Jane LaFarge Hamill: I went to The Slade specifically to study Euan Uglow’s legacy. And the New York Academy for painting technique. At a certain point I was dissatisfied with representation as a means of communicating what I wanted to say. Representation by default is narrative, and I make abstract paintings as a respite from narrative. Abstract painting is a way to create an aesthetic experience where your eye can dwell in episodes of color, texture, and movement without having to make a story of it.

L'Officiel: In 2021, your paintings were shown alongside works by Helen Frankenthaler in the exhibition Abstract at Room 57 Gallery in New York. Which painters, past or present, do you feel in conversation with?
 

Jane LaFarge Hamill: That Abstract show was a great grouping. I felt fortunate to have my work hang with Frankenthaler, she’s certainly an influence. The garden designer, Piet Oudolf, is another huge inspiration. Other painters I feel in conversation with - Peter Krauskopf, Katharina Grosse, Christopher Wool. They engage with color / gesture / surface in a way that I feel connected to in the studio.

Jane LaFarge Hamill Sea Legs 7, 2026

Pigment dispersion on canvas
58 x 38 in (147.32 x 96.52 cm)

L'Officiel: Your virtual reality work was shown in Art of VR at Sotheby’s New York in 2017, and was the subject of an essay in Leonardo, published by MIT Press, in 2022. How has painting in virtual space changed the way you approach a physical canvas, and does that digital practice find its way into Sea Legs?

Jane LaFarge Hamill: The reason that I started working in VR was to explore scale in limitless space. I wanted to make immersive paintings the viewer could step into and interact with. When I left tech (somewhat suddenly during the upheaval of the pandemic) I started painting again, which was grounding. But I couldn’t use oils anymore as I was having a physical reaction to the paints. I pivoted to pigment dispersions and one advantage I found, aside from the health benefits, was that I could mix huge quantities of each color and paint at a much larger scale than before. I’ve developed a really interesting surface quality that I think is maybe connected to my digital work. Despite my brush marks being so gestural and pronounced, the surface of the painting is surprisingly soft and smooth. Edges have a slight blur. It feels like it couldn’t have been made if I hadn’t gone through the experience of creating VR for those years.

L'Officiel: After a decade in New York and a year at NEW INC, the New Museum’s art and technology incubator, you moved to a farm in rural New Jersey and founded MarthaMOCA, an artist residency in Lambertville. What is the idea behind MarthaMOCA, who comes to stay, and how has building a platform for other artists changed your own work?

Jane LaFarge Hamill: Starting MarthaMOCA and giving artists space and time away from the pressure of their daily lives meant giving back into the artist in residence system which I greatly benefitted from myself. Residency programs are a vital part of the Art ecosystem. We’ve seen an explosion of interest in our space since we opened it 5 years ago, and we’re really proud to be doing the work. Hosting other artists and watching them thrive with support, has reminded me that I too (now that my kids are older) need to start going on residencies again. I’ll be heading to Garzon, Uruguay this coming February and am really looking forward to the creative refuge at the Porfia Project. Who knows what I’ll make- but there will be time to experiment, and push forward a few ideas I have waiting in the wings.

Space Gallery St Barth presents 

‘Sea Legs’ | Jane LaFarge Hamill

Gustavia, Saint Barthélemy
November 02 – November 19, 2026

Vernissage: Thursday, November 5th, 6-8 PM with the artist
More information: spacegallerystbarth.com 

Installation view of Jane LaFarge Hamill's Sea Legs exhibition at Space Gallery St Barth

Installation view of Jane LaFarge Hamill's Sea Legs exhibition at Space Gallery St Barth

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