Beki Borman

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.

I am currently reading The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Arles by Martin Gayford. Based on research, letters, and art Gayford has written a very intriguing novel-like account of the months that Van Gogh and Gauguin lived together. As an artist, it is very insightful always to get into the mind of another artist. Van Gogh and Gaugain differed greatly on a number of artistic philosophies, and the dialogue between them is priceless. I have blogged about Van Gogh before, and I want to really recommend this book to artists and creative thinkers alike. It is intellectually gratifying as well as a stunning story.

The simple act of drawing these trees as frequently as I have been has brought what I consider to be simple clarity and focus to my work.  I believe that the paintings I am working on now will represent a dramatic shift in my approach.  Part of art is accepting the terms of the process.  I could not do what I do now without what I have done.  As I grow and develop as a person, so does my work grow along side me.

My artist statement describes in detail the fascination I have with trees and forests in my work. What I feel compelled to share are insights regarding my use of trees in comparison to the use of the human figure. Trees are figures themselves, presenting endless possibilities in pose, form, design, gesture, etc.  Therefore, I can explore painting more directly with them, which I have been doing more of recently.  In treating the tree as a figure in this way I have simplified my content and focused on shape, line, contour, and form.  These things have always interested me but now I feel this purpose is more clear.

I prefer trees to the figure because they do not come with the baggage, sentimentality, and human associations that are unavoidably made with figure painting.  There is nothing wrong with these associations and I think it makes figure painting very profound and critical to artistic tradition.  These feelings simply do not interest me in terms of my work.  I do not deny that there is baggage yet with the trees, as there would be with any representational form, and I embrace it.  The final most important thing to note is that trees do not move, at least not in the way the figure moves.   Even though a two dimensional painting only captures a still image, ( I know this point is arguable but not the purpose of my writing today) the potential movement in a figure painting will always be something very different from my tree paintings.  My trees are more finite, solid, and fixed.  The gesture comes from their growth and pattern, but their movement or any sense of it will remain limited.

I intend to explore this idea further, and continue to investigate the idea of the tree as a figure in both my writing and painting.