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I am interested in creating work that captures the viewer in a dynamic,
physical moment.
My paintings are gestural abstractions of contemporary life and human
consciousness. They embrace a sense of time and place by acknowledging
the specter of human memory within the pace of day-to-day living. I use
viscous layers of super-saturated oil color applied against large, quiet
surfaces to suggest ease, suspension, conflict and even silence. The work
is founded in drawing, which I consider the most visual equivalent to
thought, and explores the relationship between body, gesture and mark.
In this way, I am able to move into the work surface, not simply to reproduce
the obvious, but rather to seek greater clarity of vision, more truths.
I like to think my work is about surface, structure and luminosity.
Kate Beck, 2007
There really is no simple subject matter or intended message
lurking within my surfaces:
the paintings are essentially performative. My approach has been influenced
by the abstract expressionists and color field painters of the 1950s.
As my work has evolved I have migrated more toward the minimalist movement
that followed, although I try to incorporate an organic presence into
my surfaces to avoid total flatness or sterility. Helen Frankenthaler,
Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Richard Serra and New York Radical Painting
Group artists Joseph Marioni and Marcia Hafif are some of the artists
whose work and processes have helped to shape my own aesthetic today.
I do consider art as an object in the world, which I attribute not only
as a reductive intent but to my early sculptural background. For whatever
reason, the concept of drawing and process has allowed me to come closer
to my work, to penetrate the surface and look deeper. My drawings and
paintings suddenly become an extension of myself. And the viewer, an integral
part of my work.
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