Steve Beck
Apropos le diptych "sans titre" (Carole en blue)
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Apropos "sans titre" (Carole en bleu)
I had started the new series, “les Maitresses" with a diptych and was beginning the next diptych in the series. The series is my analysis, a psychologic look at being a “mistress” and rather conceptual and honestly quite difficult for me… I see the mistress as up against a wall with nowhere to go, she knows the relationship is not really going anywhere… pressed against its unmoving solidity until she actually becomes the wall in her effort to hide her shame. But, that is another subject, as I wanted to discuss here another painting that in many ways describes my creative process because the diptych in blue in fact originated from the effort to prepare and begin the second diptych in “les Maitresses” series. And it is quite a departure in fact.
As I began to prepare the canvas I had intended the background “wall” to have a bluish cast to it… to push it gently into the background as it absorbed the mistress. But…The blue that flowed from my hand was extraordinary. It was a cool liquid that shifted my thoughts as it flowed. It shifted my conscious thoughts completely. I had discovered an extraordinary set of emotions and sensations when I fell in love with Carole and this blue… brought me there.
My left hand is my tactile center of gravity. I feel everything with my left hand. I feel light and darkness, colors, emotions…I feel Carole with my left hand, I can sense energy and I paint with my left hand and this blue that jetted now from my left hand took over the painting. This blue was singing a love song to me and the painting was my poem to her in response.
I finished the painting in one day.
As a discussion of a process, my creative process, this has nothing to do with “technique” or color theory or compositional considerations. I’ll save those mathematics for another blog. This discussion is more about how I “feel” a painting and and how the painting feels me and in the end does more to explain why I moved to abstraction so many years ago than to discuss a particular “method”. That move was probably 15 years ago now when I became totally bored with painting what I knew… what I could see. And I discovered that each can of paint, each color, each canvas texture, each pallette knife had its own particular voice… literally its own personality. And that by allowing my materials, my paint and my canvas and my tools and my subconscious to express their OWN unique personalities, I could tap into another dimension of expression. This pleases me and the paintings become a conversation between me, and them… and now you.
I brought the diptych to le Marché de la Création in Lyon the following Sunday and Carole recorded the video.
Steve Beck
May 7th, 2015 / St. Priest France
stevebeckart@aol.com