Beki Borman

I have recently been looking at the watercolors of artist Keith Crown.  The book, by Sheldon Reich, explores the history of Crown’s work.  Crown was born in 1918 and attended the Art Institute of Chicago.  He has had a long and productive career as an artist and is influenced greatly by the Midwest landscape.  Crown also spent some time in New Mexico, which can be seen as having a profound effect on his imagery as well.  I am drawn to his simplistic use of shapes and lines.  Crown adopts a few recognizable stylizations to describe things like texture and pattern.

When looking at a thirty year span of work it becomes apparent how important the development of an individual visual language is to an artists body of work.  His watercolors are sharp and colorful abstractions of rolling plains, roads, and tree lines, and rock formations.  Most of the color plates in the book focus on his watercolors done in the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s. I have just come upon this book, and have not explored it in depth yet, but found the images beautiful and honest in describing the world around us.

Image: Keth Crown “Storm Over Ranchos”, 1969

I spent a quiet afternoon in my studio doing simple, small watercolors.  These are a place for me to figure out where I go from here.  As usual, I have several different ideas and directions pulling at me from once, so these types of small intimate experiments are for me to remember what most excites me about what I do.  When I reconnect with that simple truth, the work itself is always more honest and more interesting.  I do not know if I found any answers today, but I always enjoy the process.

This was loosely referenced and mostly imagined.  I used watercolor paper with acrylic paints.  I usually despise acrylics, but when treated like watercolor they can be really subtle, especially on a small scale.  I plan on doing more acrylics like this, it felt really good.  I was reminded why I paint.  There is design, but also a feeling I sometimes struggle to achieve in my work.  This one is personal, and I am not sure entirely why.

I stumbled across this artist and just had to comment. Artist Tim Knowles makes drawings and paintings that remove the artist’s hand.  Using a variety of objects or circumstances, like cars, balloons, and trees, Knowles has the universe make art for him.  I was drawn to the tree series, in particular.  I was not clear on whether the tree branch itself is dipped in paint or ink, or if a brush is attached to the tree.  The implications for both would be very different.  Either way, the tree is given mark making abilities and is set up with an easel in front of it.  It is then left to blow in the wind, recording the natural movements of the limb over time.  I appreciate and respect this concept.  I think that the works resulting would likely be aesthetically interesting, and with knowledge of their origin, they become deeper still.

As an artist, though, I struggle to understand the benefit of such a work.  Once the idea has passed, the execution seems irrelevant.  The idea is usually better than the work.  Also, this kind of thing can easily become gimmicky and over processed.  it has already become a category of its own in contemporary art.  Finally, (and this a a personal reaction), I need the physical, tangible, sculptural experience of shaping and making with my hands.   An idea along doesn’t get me fired up the way making something physically does.  Again, I am intrigued by this work, but do not see how this art sustains itself beyond this era.

To see more of Tim Knowles work, please visit his website:

http://www.timknowles.co.uk/Home/tabid/262/Default.aspx

Come work in a creative environment with a professional artist for one-on-one sessions that will help you develop your skills, direction, and focus. Beki Borman graduated from the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design in 2004 with a BFA in painting. She has worked for years in both painting and drawing mediums and is well versed in tools and techniques as well as design and composition. Beki has taught classes and workshops at several locations throughout Southeastern Wisconsin.

No matter your experience, Beki will develop a plan and schedule with you to work with your goals as an artist. She will work with you side by side in her studio, offering guidance, feedback, while providing lessons and learning plans uniquely designed for you. There is no obligation, you pay by the hour and can cancel at any time.

Beki’s studio is located in Bay View, south of downtown Milwaukee, at the Hide House. This a community of studios and houses many wonderful artists! The Hide House is located at:

2625 S. Greeley Street
Milwaukee, WI 53207

Lessons start at $15/hr, students provide their own materials. For a travel fee, Beki can come to you as well. This fee will vary depending on distance.

To learn more about Beki and her work, please visit her website:

www.bekiborman.com

or contact her at: bekiborman@gmail.com

I did a second day of plein air at Pere Marguette Park yesterday.  I met some interesting folks and created, what i feel is a more successful painting than the first.  The is still not really my thing, and I am not really thrilled by painting buildings, but it was a good challenge for me.  The experience got me out of my studio and into the city where I felt like part of the community.  There will be a reception and auction on Friday night at 6pm for all the artists who participated.  The address is 610 N. Water Street.  I am looking forward to it.

As a member of Wisconsin Visual Artists I am making every effort to be involved in this years plein air competition taking place this week in downtown Milwaukee.  I have done plein air drawing, but not really painting.  I went out this afternoon, on a beautiful day, and did a watercolor painting,  I was at Pier Marquette Park, overlooking the river.

As the sun moved around and encroached on my shade it got a little uncomfortable after  a while.  None the less, I was able to put out a painting I am pretty satisfied with.  More rewarding than the painting perhaps were the people who stopped by to see what I was doing,  I had a few nice conversations and spent the rest of the time in the peaceful surroundings.  I will post the pictures soon, I haven’t painted architecture since college, so this experience poses new challenges.  It was a nice change of pace.  I plan to be out again on Tuesday!

Currently in my studio I am working on the painting of a tall, vertical tree colored in browns with a lively green and blue background. I am considering this painting seriously, because not only do I know if I like it, I do not know if I do not like it. It just is. It does not yet feel done and I am unsure why. It is not comfortable, and complete in the sense that all of its parts fit together harmoniously. But why is that important and to what am I painting it if it is not?

Compositionally, I can discern that it needs thinner more intricate branching around the top to balance it a bit more. This would also make it feel a bit more three dimensional an entwined in the space. As with all of my works, the tree feels slightly surreal in its relationship to the ground. I do not mind this, as I do not strive for a real space. I want the experience of the viewer to be slightly surreal, imagined, and dreamlike. I believe this to be essential to it being anything more than a nice painting of a tree.

I have written before how I treat my trees like figure drawings, focusing formally on gesture, line, and shape. Unlike paintings of people, trees carry no intrinsic emotion or meaning. So what are they then? They are just shapes against the sky. This carries a lot of existential weight for me. I do not paint the sky, or nothingness behind them. Rather, what I paint is a weighted negative space that is very much something. The painting itself is also something, both as an object and an image that I have created. It is an image of a tree that both looks like a tree and is not a tree. I hope perhaps it can be something more.

I am currently reading “Seven Days in the Art World” by Sarah Thornton.  Thornton gives descriptions of different art world experiences, one per chapter, such as a fair, a grad school critique, a biennial, an auction, etc.  These experiences are enlightening, but also disheartening.  It breaks down the romance of what it mean to be an artist and makes it sound as exciting as a day of stock trading on Wall Street.

I suppose this means I must admit that I succumb to the romantic ideal of a tortured artist, in the throws of self expression, passionate and wild with little concern for money or fame.  Well both are true, because the art world is not really composed of artists, but a secondary string of “art professionals” who make the money.

So where does that leave the artist?  A victim of consumerist culture and contemporary business?  I suppose, in a way  none of us can escape what and who it is we are if we want to be known, acknowledged, and respected for our art.  What does the artist ever really want, other than to make great art? So the art world exists like galaxy revolving around the artist’s black hole center.  Maybe this is a slightly egotistical and dark place to put the artist, but I had to use a cosmos analogy.

I am hitting another moment of transition with my work.  Anyone who has known my work for years knows that it changes dramatically.  Typically in the art world, this is not a good thing.  It is difficult to build a reputation as an artist if the work is inconsistent.  I acknowledge this, but have also known many successful visual artists with multiple bodies of work spanning many mediums.  It is part of my personality to move forward and to do it quickly.  I get bored easily and love trying new things with my work.  If anything it shows the level of passion I have for what I do.

I did the piece seen in this image yesterday in my studio and am very happy with it.  I plan to do more like this in the near future.

Everything can’t be art, or art won’t be anything.

-David A. Smith,author of “Money for Art: The Tangled Web of Art and Politics in American Democracy”

I listened to an interesting interview with author David A. Smith on the radio (KERA’s “Think” with Kris Boyd out of Texas)

Smith commented on how government in its attempts to support the arts has to set parameters that define what art is.  He also discussed whether art funding should go toward society and art accessibility, or if it should fund individual artists and their visions.  Smith is of the opinion the elitism is necessary for art, because it sets the bar for good, serious art.  As the quote above implies, if we let art be anything it destroys its own credibility.  I suppose a good analogy would be that if we have the freedom to be anything and everything, then we are nothing without the structure of reference.  I have to agree with Smith.  Even the most ground breaking “anything goes” art was only great for its rebellion, and once that boundary was broken it could not have any further power in defining a work or movement.  We need history and context as much as we need institution.  Art ultimately is a meaningless human construct anyway, so we need our own society and culture to give it purpose and meaning

I have not read Smith’s book yet, but plan to, as the radio interview alone was excellent and thought provoking.