Jane Harris obituary

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, t