The August Selection: 3 Artists We Love
BETHANY CZARNECKI
American Artist Bethany Czarnecki received her BA from Barnard College and Columbia University. Her contemporary abstract paintings explore the realms of female identity, color and form. She has exhibited nationally at galleries and museums, including The Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, NY, Massey Klein Gallery, New York, NY and Hollis Taggart, Southport, CT. Her work is in the collection of Citizens Bank Corporate Office, Bentonville, AR. Born in Westwood, NJ, Czarnecki now lives and works in Westport, CT
“My hope is that the paintings are experiential. By creating a body of paintings that project an illusionistic sense of place and explore the paradoxes and complexities of the female body and its representation, I wish to place the viewer in the present – bringing them into his or her own mind and body. Abstracted compositions investigate themes of gender, identity, the human psyche and sensuality. I work slowly with oil paint, carving out multiple layers of concentric, biomorphic shapes that radiate chromatic planes. Ranging from opaque color fields to translucent overlays, nested silhouettes bend and bloom as they foster complex relationships within each composition. The repetition of forms signifies a distortion of time and place that allude to dreamscapes, while color becomes a carrier of emotion which ultimately reveals the unseen. I like to use color to awaken the viewer, I find it is an effective trigger for emotion. Inspired by the interplay between sensory experience and emotional resonance, the paintings invite the viewer to contemplate that which lies beyond the self.”
HELEN BOOTH
Booth spent her childhood in the middle of England, sandwiched between the British industrial heartland and the rolling hills of the Peak District. She graduated from the Wimbledon School of Art in London in 1989 and has been painting for over 30 years. Having spent 15 years in London, she now lives and works in an old woollen mill in South West Wales. She has received both a Pollock Krasner grant, as well as recently awarded a bursary from the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation.
“Having recently completed a residency at the Hafnarborg Arts and Culture centre, followed immediately by the Lockdown, I have been able to concentrate on my practise without the distraction of exhibition deadlines. It has been an important time for me. I’ve spent the last 3 months experimenting with lots of ideas and allowing myself to make mistakes - Something that I don’t normally have the freedom to do. And it’s been so liberating.
My galleries are now taking tentative steps to reopen and my first solo Exhibition at the &Gallery in Edinburgh is now confirmed for November. So, I am working hard to get all the work made for the show. It’s a sizeable space and so I’m making 24 new paintings in response to Iceland. The landscape on the South Coast is both humbling and beautiful, and the work will reflect my emotional reaction to the place. I am also fascinated with the concept of Beauty–Agnes Martin summed it up I think in her Beauty is a Mystery of Life lecture in 1989 and many points made still resonate;
‘When I think of art, I think of beauty. Beauty is the mystery of life. It is in the mind, not in the eye. In our minds, we have an awareness of perfection that leads us on’.
This statement is often at the back of my mind when I create work. The idea that what we see, when we see and how we see, contributes to our own understanding of Beauty. I spent most of my time travelling along the South coast in a state of awe at the country’s beauty, but also slightly terrified by the menace of Nature.
I love this knife edge balance, of being and not being.
Being humbled by Nature has led to an incredible focus and a sense of time passing. I am full of ideas and eager to make work. I’m excited by what the future has to offer me as an artist as I continue to grow and develop my practise. My ultimate dream is to visit Svalbard and the Arctic Circle. I was once asked, if I had to pick one cardinal direction on a compass as an artist which direction would it be – For me it’s most definitely North. I hope to return to Iceland at some point, as it is the majesty of this place, with its monochromatic palette that inspires and empowers me as an artist.”
ANNE SOPHIE LORANGE
Born in Boston, MA, Lorange grew up in the U.S. and moved to Norway as a teenager. Moving to Norway was back then was a challenge, trying to adapt to a new culture. These experiences led to a deeper understanding of identity and also of not belonging. Through her artwork, she is constantly exploring the beauty of existence, of emptiness, silence, and of the in-between. Her paintings, outdoor drawings and installations, all convey to the observer an abstract language of relationships between the seen and unseen, presence and absence, isolation and togetherness, emptiness and presence. Her artworks balance between solid structures and intuitive lines, shaping the invisible into emotional landscapes where the observer can exist within a freedom of space.
“My current goal is to further explore the openness of language, without borders, or translations. I am concerned with the complexities of human nature. A feeling can either divide us or connect us, drawing us closer together. How can painting exist as a visible bridge into space, where we can see one another clearer? I want the observer to exist beyond words, beyond writing, beyond definitive answers, or the border of one’s own body. Painting is a sensory experience, and when I apply paint to the canvas it’s as if each color has its own feeling and becomes animated. I am constantly in the center of something fleeting, yet entirely concrete.
The surface of the paintings, become a layering of feelings, sometimes I choose to paint over, or just let them come closer to me, paint another layer with the same color, or I let the transparency of colors shine through. I use a lot of poetic fragments in my work. My titles are linked to how I understand language. I like the challenge of how words and painting can be linked together in a symbiosis, binding together the fragmentary and fleetingness of what language evokes in us. And how can I convey a feeling that goes beyond the definiteness of language? I’m interested in turning what I’ve learned upside down. Does Z necessarily have to be the last letter in the alphabet? How can art move us beyond what we understand as a given truth? Like understanding that the edges of the canvas are not necessarily the edge, but more an opening into something further out, something beyond. Or the feeling of a chaotic gesture can be something stable, and a structure in the painting can exist as the opposite. Chaos and structure can exist as a kind of paradox of representation.
Anything can happen in life, and often order balances upon something unstable, like today’s situation of Covid-19 and social distancing, we are all scattered across the place, the music has intervals of silence, a note can repeat itself, exposed and open, too fleeting to be defined, we lose the word if we try to speak it. I need to paint it, between the hidden and almost revealed, tasting the tears, reflecting somebody else for instance who isn’t me, so I can remember tomorrow better. Am I the edge of myself? Feeling my pulse, a passion, the invisible sparkle of notes, my restlessness, or the logic of the illogical feeling I have never experienced before. A feeling can exist, as a sighing, deep and prolonged, and then immediately it escapes you. When I am drawing with charcoal on the stones alongside the shore, I know that the drawings will vanish in a day or two, but I find that intrinsically beautiful. My drawings are gone, but the stones are still there, however they change too, just we don’t notice it. The tiny small changes of the rough, hard stones, like a small crack that suddenly has a tiny stone in between it. Working with materials like charcoal, I know will vanish, yet the line is so precise and stable at the moment I draw it. I think this is the beauty of art, the artworks constantly change over time and also disappear. This fleeting aspect has always fascinated me, the constant ever-changing aspect of the living that surrounds us. Just like our feelings, they come and disappear. At the same time I must also return to the same area, my childhood playground, and continue drawing, continue to draw and paint on the familiar stones, but from a different, more experienced perspective and explore the unknown in the known. A new narrative develops from a relational context, and the understanding that there is not only one perspective develops. Continuous layers of hidden traces and connections surround us, and the simple charcoal line can act as a reductive abstraction binding the observer into a freedom of the unspeakable, erasing the distance between the world and the self. A feeling of togetherness can exist, and I’ not just a single voice anymore. The sight-specific becomes a universal. My dream is to continue my journey, creativity is a source of energy. Painting is a feeling, but when I’m finished with a specific painting, it often escapes what I feel, and I want it to continue to speak for itself and instead I start on a new one. We are fortunate to have novelty of a spirit and awareness of the fleeting moment when all of a sudden we become a stranger to ourself; I am no longer alone, the painting can smell my lost soul, I need nothing more, I can commune with an experience of eternity. In five years, I see myself developing my art even further. My dream is to collaborate with other artists on creative projects. For instance, how can we express a shared silence through painting or drawing? I dream for instance, of collaborating with someone in the space of Edvard Munch’s studio. I worked there for a few months two different years, and what struck me there was the silence of this space. It was so quiet, yet when I had worked there for a while, the space started to become animated, and silence became the opposite of what I believed silence was. An empty space was not empty. It was then I understood that the visible and invisible are the same, we need both at the same time. It could be interesting to also work with a contemporary poet where we could together further expand language, break rules and go beyond known structures. In addition, I will continue to teach others art through my post as a painting teacher at an art school in Oslo. It simply reminds me of the necessity to always be humble, curious, and open as an artist and teacher. We are all together in this journey of life and let’s fill it with meaning and develop further.”
