Author: Beki Borman

I went to Chicago today to drop off “Leaning In” at the Morpho Gallery for a show.  I took this opportunity to visit Chicago’s River North neighborhood and gallery hop a bit.  The drive down there consisted of bumper to bumper traffic, severe storms, and hail.  When I finally did arrive, I was able to view a half dozen or so galleries between downpours.  The highlights of the day for my were the Ann Nathan Gallery and The Roy Boyd Gallery.  The work at these two galleries in particular really drew me in.  I usually don’t get a good vibe from the Ann Nathan Gallery, but Deborah Ebbers work is definitely up my alley so I had to investigate.  Her colors and handling of surface are beautiful. I like the texture she is able to create for her trees.  Also, I noticed, she paints around the branches similarly to the way I do in some works.

The Roy Boyd Gallery was a different kind of surprise.  I wandered in by chance and was greeted very warmly (not in the usual stuffy gallery sort of way).  The works were not something I would instantly be drawn to from a subject perspective, but these organic abstracts by Richard Gibbons were too rich to brush off.  At first glance I thought they may be gimmicky,  However, the rich surface, colors, and shimmering forms knocked me over.  The thing I puzzled about, however, was the fact that most of these works were done on multiple panels, in some cases displayed with spacing and in other cases not.  The choice of separate panels, and the placement of the edge felt intentional compositionally.  However logically, in regards to the subject, it felt  over complicated and unnecessary.  None the less, I tried to envision the work as seamless, without the breaks, and somehow it lost power.  I am utterly perplexed, and that is great.  I highly recommend seeing these.

To get into the mindset of abstraction for an upcoming class, I picked up “Abstract Art” by Anna Moszynska.  Moszynska writes a very thorough and analytical history of abstraction and how different movements over the last century or so have implemented it.  I enjoy the ways in which Moszynska compares and contrasts different forms of abstraction.  In an enticing preface, Moszynska says,

“…to many artists, the distinction between representational and abstract art now seems meaningless, because their work daily brings them face to face with the fact that in certain essential ways all art is abstract; and equally, all art is representational, in that it represents something-if only an intention.” (9)

I suppose I have always found myself looking for someone to say this out loud.  As obvious as it may seem, in real practice it is easy to overlook.  Art often gets categorized by our attempts to describe it.  In doing so, “abstract” has come to be a term used for art that is a field of color, or simply shapes and colors.  This type of work, like Mondrian’s paintings for example, is now in a genre of “pure abstraction”, which is still arguable.  My point is that when I use abstraction to describe some of my own work I do so knowing that they are representational of trees, but I am searching for image and color beyond the subject, which I believe makes it both.

I am getting a lot of painting done these days, and have tons of new work to show both in Plymouth next month as well as in Milwaukee in July,  However, I a keeping my show season to a minimum this year.  With the economy being what it is I have found people investing more in personal experiences and enterainment rather than objects.  Thus, sales are down.   I feel that now would be a good time for me to build my teaching skills and class experience, so as my calender shows, I have a lot of classes in the works!

As for the new work, expect to see a lot more posting soon!

I did not really have anything too serious to blog about today so I decided to comment on the fact that spring is actually here, and though it has not felt like it lately, today I noticed the trees budding and was struck by the fact that soon I will loose access to much of my subject matter.  I prefer, artistically, the bare trees.  To me leaves hid the figure of the tree much like a clothed model to a figure artist.  So, I have been snapping as many photos as I can.  Of course I would prefer to work from life.  My dilemma is that when the trees are bare it is often too cold, and when it is warm the trees are concealed by masses of leaves.  Who knows, maybe I will adopt foliage into my work.  Things change and evolve so quickly with me that I have trouble anticipating what I will be doing a few month from now.

At the moment, however, it is just the skeletal structure that fascinates me, and I have been painting it against a flat abstracted ground that uses the paint as subject and the negative shapes around the tree.  The tree, then exists in a void and that void has no depth.  The tree sits even with the paint.  It has a very contemporary look to it, but I am trying to find ways to may the ground more interesting as subject itself, rather than just filler.  I have been experimenting with brush stroke and subtle hue variation.  Color is everything in these pieces.  The colors of the tree are often in stark contrast to the colors of the negative space, and that relationship tells the whole painting,  The subject is definitely also color.  But I still struggle from letting it get too wild and contrasted.  I constantly have to go back and tone things down, otherwise the noise of everything cancels everything else out.

Just some ramblings.

I just want to make mention of an artist I have stumbled upon recently.  Katie Holten does life sized tree installations called, “Excavated Trees”.  Here trees appear with both branches and roots as if the had been ripped from the ground (hence “excavated”).  What makes this more interesting is that the trees are made entirely from materials found on site, and therefor have a sort of organic natural relationship to their surroundings.  The materials are not necessarily organic, Holten often installs in institutions and therefore easily find raw building materials, paper, art supplies, etc.  Yet, we get a sense of the home grown theme of her work.  I am interested in the concept of how tree reflect the environment in which they grow.

It is only natural that when others view my work they come up with artists whose work may be similar to mine.  I want to consider for a moment what this means.  Part of being an artist is finding a unique expression for what interests us.  However, just as there are only so many combinations of words to make a poem, I think painting will always inevitably fall into groups, schools, or genres.  We are all people, after all, having the experience of our humanity and it is inevitable that some forms of our expression will be similar.  I am frankly proud to be apart of something beautiful and fluid rather than on an island, artistically.  Below I have two examples of artwork that my own has been compared to.  I cannot say I saw these works before I did my own, because honestly I did not.  However, both these artists are in general familiar to me and I respect both of them immensely:

Vincent Van Gogh’s trees: (As seen in image) I get this one a lot, and I definitely see the resemblance.  I also cannot hide the fact that I love his work and his use of color and mark.  He is very aggressive and reacts to his own canvas more than to his subject.  I get that.

Piet Mondrian’s trees:  This one was new to me.  I have always loved Mondrian, but for his later work and his writing.  I had never before seen his tree paintings, which are from an earlier period in his career.  I just recently looked them up, and all I can say is that I like him even more now.  I feel a strange affinity to him, wondering if he took a similar path as me, once, even briefly.

The power of influence and history in art is profound and I do not want the story to dictate my work, but I take pleasure in knowing that others thought like me once.

Image: Vincent Van Gogh , Branch of an Almond Tree in Blossom (1890)

In an effort to rediscover my work and focus, as well as to better understand my subject, I am spending much of the month focusing on gesture.  I am treating trees as I would the human figure in a figure drawing class and am using quick rough gestures that attempt to ignore the surface and focus on the movement.

In these drawings what I am looking to find is the underlying mainline of movement or the dominant shape running through the length of the tree.  In the branches I focus on dominant areas of direction or angle.  I also look for areas that feel stressed, such as a hard bend.  In a sense this humanizes the tree a bit, for I am suggesting movement beyond the trees actual ability o move.  Yet I believe the gesture to be there and I feel this exercise will bring my closer to my trees and hopefully create some interesting work as well.  I have posted a few, with more to come soon.  They w ill be in the “2009 Drawing” page for now.

Below is a link to an interview of Alex Katz written by Mark Rappolt for Art Review Magazine.  Personally, I have never liked Katz’s work.   I would walk through the section of the Milwaukee Art Museum that featured Katz’s work and would shudder.  I remember disliking Katz when I was young, which says something at least for the impact of his work as being memorable.  I dislike Katz’s work mostly because of it large, posterized, pop image look.  I often love work that uses a graphic, posterized representation, but it is Katz’s simple shapes and seamless marks that drive me crazy.  I want to see paint move and dance!

In any case, the interview is interesting so I thought I would add it in.  Rappolt does a good job of pushing some complex questions.  I particularly like Katz’s description of art as fashion and the bubble that is occupied by artists fortunate enough to be doing the right work at the right time.  Katz’s comments about the state of art and culture are great, but I would have liked to read  more about his paintings, and why he paints the way he paints.  I am sure I can find something, there has been a lot written about him.  He definately has been part of the fashionable art-star bubble that he refers to.

To read the article:

http://www.artreview.com/profiles/blog/show?id=1474022%3ABlogPost%3A680007

A contemporary artists that I recently came across and really like is Elizabeth Silver.  I found her in a magazine, I believe Art News may have reviewed her, and I was struck by her work.  Her work is figurative and very gestural, using line and color to create form and interest in a very gestural way.  I was impressed by the first words in her artist statement, “For me, the line’s the thing: the heart and guts of my art. My drawing and painting always begin – and frequently end – with line.”  I have always personally savored the quality of line in my own work, but in my recent oils I feel like I have lost that quality for no reason other than not having the patience or the brushes to do it big.  I am reminded that I would like to focus on line again in my own work and embrace the things that excite me in art, instead of painting toward expectations that are artificial.

To see Elizabeth Silver’s work, please visit:

http://www.elizabethsilverexpressionist.com/

Lives of the Artists, by Calvin Tomkins, is a fun easy read that offers significant insight.  Tomkins writes about meetings and interviews with several well known contemporary artists.  These are not the stuffy pretentious interviews that we often find in magazines.  The artists often let Tomkins into their home, into their studio, and into their life.  Thus, the interviews are more casual, real, and personal.  Tomkins also provides us with biographical information about each artist, so we read about them with a sense of understanding about who they are, what they do, and how they do it.  We learn about figures such as Jeff Koons, Matthew Barney, Julian Schnabel, and Damien Hirst.  The artists we meet in these chapters are not sensationalized art super stars but simple, thoughtful real people.  More importantly, I think anyone with any interest in contemporary art would find these stories compelling.