Untitled, (1967) is a very early example of a body of work, known as Curvilinear paintings — vivid fields of color painted onto large canvases are disrupted by precise lines in contrasting shades that curve and occasionally intersect. The mathematical precision of these curves, (which were initially formulated on large sheets of tracing paper layered over the canvases before being painstakingly translated into paint), and the flatness of the paintings’ surfaces demonstrate Jaramillo’s close affinities with significant movements within abstraction at the time. Reacting against the expressive, gestural painterliness of abstract expressionism, Jaramillo’s formal compositions are aesthetically and conceptually linked to ‘hard-edged painting’ (a term coined by Californian critic Jules Langster in 1959 to describe a style of geometric abstraction that flourished in the ‘60s on the West Coast) as well as the early development of minimalism.

In a 1970 review of these Curvilinear paintings, artist Frank Bowling describes them as a ‘response to paint more physical than cerebral.’(1) Indeed, the physical materiality of her medium – in this case, paint – is central to Jaramillo’s work; for these paintings, she spent many hours mixing paints to create intense fields of color, in which new tones are revealed in different lights and from different angles.
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1. Bowling, F. Outside the Galleries: Four Young Artists, Arts Magazine 45, no.2 (November 1970) p.31