Humphries' early paintings—comprising fields of repetitive, grid-like dots—considered abstract expressionism's disordered energy as a constructive tool for unpacking of painting today.
Read MoreOne of Humphries' signature bodies of work is her 'Silver Paintings' series, for which she uses metallic colours to play with light and reflections. The shimmering, metallic paint—repeatedly layered then scraped away from the canvas—lends the series a somewhat industrial aesthetic, while dark marks laid atop the layered grounds are nods towards the gestural tendencies of abstract expressionism.
During the 2010s, Humphries began working with fluorescent tones and black paint. To make these 'Black Light Paintings', Humphries worked at a high speed in a pitch-black room, spraying canvases with gallons of paint which spattered and oozed to form deeply textured artworks. When viewed under black light, the works evoke the energy of dance and rave culture of the 1980s.
In 2017, Jacqueline Humphries exhibited a series of ten new paintings at Greene Naftali Gallery in New York. In these large-scale works, Humphries references the digital world by using grid-like stencils and emoticon icons of smiling and frowning faces, layered in swathes of paint.
