Untitled 3 Brushed Charcoal 24x16 2009

I could live with this drawing of Kate Beck. I would hang it someplace where I could sit and stare at it with my morning coffee. There are moments of sereneness, elegance and then, the ever changing shifting of the image. I am interested in how she is dealing with the physicality and subtly of drawings on paper. Below is an installation shot of a drawing and Kate's description of how it is presented.

large drawing 42 x47-- graphite on paper, mounted on aluminum, which is my most current drawing work. I wanted to make the mark and the paper more accessible to human reaction -- I believe the paper has real life to it which gets hidden beneath protective glass, plexi. Mounting them on aluminum gave them a physical shape -- integral to the work -- and when on the wall, it protrudes a bit so that air and light fall in and around it. I like that. I varnish the drawings for protection.

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oil painting w/graphite, mica 12x12

Influence of Sky

oil painting w/graphite, mica 12x12

About me:

I am a non-objective visual artist interested in the pure aesthetic of line and color, and its potential for expressing a wide range of thought and feeling. My work is founded in drawing, which I consider the most visual equivalent to thought. I make large scale graphite drawings on paper mounted on aluminum panel, and poured oil paintings. Process is an integral component of my work. I embrace light conceptually as color, and form.

I also publish KATE BECK :: ART NOTES, a blog about contemporary art.

I live in Harpswell, Maine on the ocean with my husband, Jamie Whittemore, and our dog, Thomas. We have 4 grown up kids.

Top Art Influences:

Probably the most significant influence as far as my work today has been books. I was read to frequently as a child. The visual impact of the words on the pages, and the voice of my grandmother reading them and telling me the stories. It defined my sense of place; of being. Many of our books were old volumes –Arabian Nights, for instance, Rose Red, Beauty and the Beast... Not many illustrations. Often, though, the illustrations were prints, which I loved to look at, and into. So my love of drawing really comes from there. I drew everything – tried to draw over the pictures in books, on the big chalk board over the radiator in our kitchen (a piece of which I have in my studio now), outside on the pavement. To this day, drawing, both line and tonal hue, makes my heart beat faster…

Artists who have influenced me:

-- early Renaissance painters for their magnificent color and story-telling, humanism (Masaccio, Pieter Bruegal the Elder, van Eyck…). Much like stories in books, to me

*--the landscape drawings of Rembrandt – his deft perception, and manner of capturing so much with so little.

--ancient Chinese ceramics, formed and marked, delineating the cultures – so human an expression

*-- Gerhard Richter, his deconstructed images and physical process.

-- Color field painters, especially Frankenthaler

-- then, Ryman…

Today I am very interested in structure, and abstraction of thought and feeling, how that can manifest itself in space through line, and hue.

Katarina Grosse has been a great contemporary influence.

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Untitled, Graphite,Charcoal on Rives, 46"x42" 2008-2009

Statement (formal)

Drawing through Process

I am interested in the pure aesthetic of line as an element of both color and substance, and its potential for expressing a wide range of thought and feeling. My drawings and paintings are created intuitively as a response to material placed within a defined space or shape: graphite on paper, paint on substrate. They are quiet, yet deliberate. Subtle gradients of soft and subdued tones evolve from a repeated resolution of line, allowing an essence of life to echo within the austere confines of the structural surface. In this way, a tension is created which oscillates between formalistic geometry and existential space; an allusion to thought and consciousness, and the passage of time. This is my structure; my vocabulary.

Manifesto

I believe white to be the most inherently beautiful color as it carries with it the potential to simultaneously expose and negate space.

I believe black to be the most innately powerful color as it is defined by the presence of light as well as by the absence of light.

All comes of air, of water, of light.

Kate Beck, 2010

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Haiku (Blue) poured oil and pigmented pencil 46x46 inches

sea from my home, studio

News

-Black and White, at Metaphor Contemporary Art in Brooklyn, NY thru March 6, with 2 new large, poured oil paintings

-Art on the Edge, New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe – opening April 15 – August 2010

Curated by Nicholas Baume, Laura Addison – full body of work, painting, drawing.

-Fuzzy Logic: Contemporary Painting after a Century of Abstract Art at the Cambridge School of Weston, Weston, MA – curated by Todd Bartel

-Drawing show at Icon Contemporary Art, Brunswick, Maine – opening May 1, new panels

-Non-object art international group exhibit, curated by John Tallman and Ron Buffington at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, Jan 2011, and traveling around

Also this spring, a writing project on my blog exploring the contemporary drawings, process of 4 artists: myself, Marietta Hoferer, Anne Lindberg and Jaanika Peerna. Excited about this, we are all friends!