Beki Borman

This drawing was done today in my sketchbook, in crayon from photo reference. I am doing these in preparation for a new direction my work is taking. I think I am going back to oils. I will be reacting to new images, and also past images of landscape. I expect the final paintings to be a copy of a copy. Twice removed (at least) from the original landscape. Along this path of abstraction, the final image will be filtered by photograph, drawing, medium, color, and of course, me. I have never been able to do abstract landscapes in oil. I confess, something about the medium has always caused me to tighten up. Something about my recent acrylics, poured and splashed, has given me room to find what I am looking for. There is still control and decision making, but I think I now know to what end.

It has been a lovely five day weekend from my day job. Most of it was spent doing 4th of July festivities. However, yesterday and today were mainly devoted to painting. I realized, however, that my work does not lend itself to full days in the studio. My thin, watered layers of paint take sometimes several hours to dry. This means I paint for an hour and watch it dry the rest of the day. Of course, I have several canvases going at once, but the situation remains. As much as I have enjoyed entire days to paint, I think my 2 hours every morning before work can be just as productive.

On a side note, as I watched paint dry I finished rereading Tom Wolfe’s The Painted Word, which was well worth the down time from painting.

Click here to read the article.

I read an interesting blog by John Hammond entitled: What Makes us (More) Human: The Vast Middle Ground Between Art and Science. Hammond has been featured on Art 21’s blog a few times for similar discussions. He has both science and art backgrounds. I have read many things of this topic (being that its a driving force for my work) and this piece had two key insights that I found unique or at least intriguing.

This first point that Hammond begins the article with is about specialization. He suggests the future of our species will be similar to ants in an ant colony. We are highly specialized workers, existing in out own spheres of knowledge. I agree. He uses this to make the point that science and art are treated very differently in out society. This leads me to his next interesteing point. Hammond states that art is subjective truth and science is objective truth. This is a common view.

Hammond then writes, “So what lies in that vast middle ground between objectivity and subjectivity?
I believe the human aesthetic does.”

After this he dives into a pretty detailed explanation, giving examples of human biases toward symmetry and idealized form.

The point is more simple in the end. In dividing the fields of art and science, we compromise our own humanity found in the middle ground experiences.

This is a new piece (Chromascape 26) just finished in the studio today.  I have been experimenting with doing my acrylic landscapes on various surfaces.  This piece is on unprimed canvas, which I think worked out quite nicely.  I am also attempting to do a piece on raw wood panel, but that posed a few other problems and may or may not see completion.

I haven’t been updating quite as much, I have been busy focusing on the work.  Also, my wonderful husband is putting together a new website for me, which I hope to launch in the next few weeks.

I am currently finishing reading “To the Rescue of Art: Twenty-Six Essays” by Rudolf Arnheim.  The essays are broad in topic, everything from psychology, science, history, etc. and how these things influence art and the legacy of art.  Some of the essays are really interesting, other are pretty dry.  None the less, well worth digging into in my opinion.

I spent part of last week in Boston, visiting a good friend going to Grad School for painting at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts.  It was a return to art school for me.  I got to sit in on critiques, attend a lecture, and tour studios.  I got to meet, talk, and party with a group of really exceptional artists.  I also had the opportunity to view thesis exhibitions and get a sense for what is coming out of East Coast art right now.

In addition, I was fortunate enough to spend a few days hanging out at the Museum of Fine Art, where I saw an array of works.  Some of the most memorable artists include Gauguin, Giacometti, Monet, Luis Melendez, and Kara Walker.  I toured the current Egyptian artifact exhibitions where I learned about tombs and mummies.  The entire trip was both educational and inspirational.

Image: Monet paintings seen at the MFA

I am currently reading The Art Instinct by Denis Dutton.  When I saw this book on the shelf, I knew I had to read it, as it applies to many of my current ideologies.  However, I was also skeptical.  I thought it likely that the book would be a collection of badly described theories.  I anticipated a preachy text describing the innate human appreciation of beauty.  I have to say, now being about half way through, that so far I have been pleasantly surprised.  Dutton’s arguments are sound in most cases.  He uses examples of science and history, as well as extensive thought experiments, to describe the jump humans make is aesthetic pleasure.  It is not preachy, or sided in any art form.  It is actually a very comprehensive discussion.  Dutton had caused me to consider aspects of human life in relation to our appreciation of aesthetic that I would have never before considered.  I also must say quite honestly that in parts the reading is dense.  However, this book is worth a second read.

My recent work provides me with an entirely new outlet for my obsessions. I feel that I often treat my art not as a grand statement, or a refined image, but rather as a series of experiments. I am seduced by the endless possibilities of what can form on a two dimensional surface. This is what propels me forward. Therefore, I have little patience for laboring over large precious canvases and carving out detailed images. One thing that I constantly struggle with is the balance between abstraction and representation, as well as spontaneity and control. This new body of work, the “Chromascapes” deals with these issues in ways I previously have not.

My subject matter has always used the natural world as a primary source of inspiration, whether that be through abstract biological forms, landscapes, trees, or patterns. Nature remains the subject of the Chromascape Series, though less directly. While I have included my pastels under the the umbrella of the Chromascape Series, I handle them very differently. For right now, I am merely speaking of the acrylic paintings. The paintings all feel like landscapes to some extent. The primary reason for this is that almost all the paintings of this series have a horizontal line or break in them that creates the sense of the horizon. One question I must ask myself, and ask the viewer, is whether these would still be landscapes without it. Obviously, I embrace the use of landscape through my titling, “Chromascape” which represents the idea of a color landscape. These are works of color, with color being the primary subject and landscape a secondary one.

Nature is also addressed in the methodology of these works. Water, in a sense, does the painting. I pool large amount of water on the surface of the paintings. I use pouring methods, and minimal brushwork, to push paint through the water. Environmental factors in the room, on the surface of the table, and in the paint itself, control most of the major directions. I make minor adjustments, by dragging a pool of water in one direction, or angling the canvas. The ways the colors mix, bind, and dance around each other, however, remains mostly out of my control. I suppose I consider this a collaboration between myself and the water.

The process is difficult for me, it is a leap. Many contemporary artists have used similar art making processes, and I have often seen it to be a gimmick. Despite my reservations, I have come to this process naturally, after years of painting practice and I see it as the next logical direction for my work to take. Rather than try to make these into something they are not, I want to simply understand the process, method, and concept I am bringing to these works. They are color, water, movement, chance. They are what I believe the universe to be. I think it is important that they are landscapes, because the landscape ties them to our worldly experience, it brings them home to our day to day lives. The landscape is an image we can relate to and through it I hope we can appreciate the explosion of potential behind it.

I am currently reading (or trying to read) “A Theory of Art” by Stephen David Ross.  Ross is a philosopher, and has written about a number of topics, including aesthetics, morality, science, and culture.  This book focuses exclusively on Ross’s theory of contrast.  Ross argues that all other theories and artistic movements are incomplete.  Contrast is what he measures, weighs, and validates art by.  I would take this to be a given, but he creates a very phenomenological picture, which I find interesting.  The contrasts in art, for Ross, have degrees of complexity that can be read as layers within a work itself but also include history, knowledge, environment, etc.  Ross argues for knowledge, and for the discussions art evokes.

“If artistic value is intensity of contrast, what is important is how the contrasts function and gain intensity.  The capacity of contrasts to promote higher levels and richer complexities  is the primary feature of our understanding of art….” (Ross,11)

“A Theory of Art” was published by the State University of New York in 1982

Stephen David Ross, born in 1935, is currently a Professor of Philosophy at Binghamton University in New York.