pproximately 5 years ago Andrew Haines changed his working method: he began working less from life and more frequently in the studio from his drawings and photographs.  Using a 150-year-old technology like photography may not seem like a great leap but it has had a profound change on his work.  No longer bound by the weather or by finding a suitable place to work, Haines found that the “canned sunshine” in a photograph provided him with the time needed to make an image and opened a new range of  subjects that would otherwise be unavailable to him.  He continues to collect images from his surroundings and over time he has gathered a number of references on any given subject.  With this method Haines can combine ideas based on years of looking at the landscape.

Haines’s basic approach to making a painting has changed little, for he was able to apply what he had learned from painting in the field to studio work.  In working from photographs he does not project the image on to his panel; rather, referring to one or more color snapshots, he paints forms freely, blocking in the color and compositional elements.  Not obliged to document a place, he is free to add or eliminate details, often combining aspects of several different views to express his own vision.  This is followed by a series of revisions where he adjusts the relative scale and location of things, corrects vanishing points, determines a consistent light source, and thus brings the painting into agreement.  By working in this way, Haines is able to maintain a sense of spontaneity and avoid the stiffness that sometimes can come from working form a photograph.

Andrew Haines has contemplated the landscape since his childhood in rural southern New Jersey.  He holds a degree form Temple University’s Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, where he studied painting.  A recent recipient of a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Mr. Haines’s work is represented in many private as well as public collections including, the Boston Athenaeum, the Zimmerli Museum at Rutgers University and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.  Since 1990 Mr. Haines has worked with the frame collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and was officially named the first conservator for frames at that institution in 2002.

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