Studios > Beth Gilfilen
Beth Gilfilen
For me, painting is full of risk, spontaneity,
potential. I choose painting to describe the anxieties of our
time. As in life, I manage uncertainty through a conscious tracking
of time with fluid paint. Like a conversation, alternating line
and wash test out form and ideas, all the while doing so with abandon;
a blind movement forward. I map references to the body and time, forging
temporal structures. As I work, the all-encompassing motion of laying
down line deviates, sprouting off to create appendages and more fragmented
forms. Jaunty, disjointed, fractured entities twist in space and appear
on the verge of collapse. I am acutely aware of touch and the reconstruction
of spatial memory. A kinetic energy can take over. Often, I interrupt
improvisation with more conscious maneuvers. I shift to distant, material
concerns as I outline, obliterate the excess, and sometimes create a
skim coat through which the painting’s history can be viewed. The
best paintings I make are the ones I can’t explain.
In the same way I pollute my abstract
paintings with figurative and spatial references, I plan to complicate
my working methods through engagement with the other artists and visitors
in Newark. Like many artists, I am a very private artist. However, I
am at a point in my work in which I sense a great need to get out of
my comfort zone, and be challenged by my peers, my audience, and whomever
visits my studio. Rather than beginning my works with a connection to
the materials or myself, I would like start from the outside, collecting
a series of responses from other residents that describe what their
thoughts are on the “zeitgeist” of our time. This project could
extend to other groups, such as local schools, or collections of statements
from blogs, or from newspapers.
