Kate Beck

Artist Statement

Notes about the Work
I am a painter. I am interested in the pure aesthetic of color and line, and its potential for expressing a wide range of thought and feeling. My finished surfaces are large, flat areas, often monochromatic. I construct my paintings and drawings by establishing color relationships tonally and adhering to a precise application process through which I institute scale, proportion and mark.  My aesthetic is founded in formal principles and methodologies of drawing, which I consider the most visual equivalent to thought.
Kate Beck, 2008

There really is no simple subject matter or intended message lurking within my surfaces: the paintings are essentially performative. I strive to elicit a subliminal response from the viewer. My approach has been influenced by the Abstract Expressionists and Color Field painters of the 1950s. As my work has evolved I have migrated more toward the Minimalist movement that followed, although I try to incorporate an organic presence into my surfaces to avoid total flatness or sterility. Richard Serra, Gerhard Richter, Helen Frankenthaler and New York Radical Painting Group artists Joseph Marioni and Marcia Hafif are some of the artists whose work and processes have helped to shape my own aesthetic today. I do consider art as an object in the world, which I attribute not only to a reductive intent but to my early sculptural background. For whatever reason, the concept of drawing and process has allowed me to come closer to my work, to penetrate the surface and look deeper. My drawings and paintings suddenly become an extension of myself. And the viewer, an integral part of my work.