Steve Beck

Click the link just below:

http://youtu.be/xElsQhZD5AM

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.

http://youtu.be/xElsQhZD5AM

Steve Beck

May 7th, 2015 / St. Priest France

stevebeckart@aol.com

Click for the trailer....

http://www.artmajeur.com/en/account/stevebeckart/videos/16573

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NpSFL5iwwQ

A documentary film that follows Steve Beck, an expatriate American abstract painter living and working in Lyon France, as he uses his  artwork to communicate in a  new and extraordinary way. 

Steve Beck, Found On The Street breaks the mold of documentary films that simply hover around an artist, his philosophies and his methods. This film takes on the issues of migration, immigration and the human experience, as Beck observes, “…to give up everything…. to find a better life… and still end up on the streets.”

Reflecting on his own inevitable displacement from France, Beck decides to put his work out into the streets of Lyon, hanging his paintings on the city’s ancient walls and attaching them to bridges and railings in order to, “Call attention to the human condition of migration.”

Beck quickly discovers that his paintings are taken nearly immediately from the locations he has chosen. One of these events is captured on film. This realization prompts Beck to begin to reconsider his mission. “So I wonder….” Beck questions, “Have I called attention to the plight of the immigrant…. or have I just decorated a few living rooms?” Interviews conducted with local people who have encountered Beck's work on the streets, add clarity to this process. Having no regrets, Beck continues to place his work on the street, adding: “I did what I had to do.”

The film also sharply brings into focus Beck's philosophy as a working artist… from scenes of his unique method of using a blowtorch to literally light his paint on fire… his own commentary…comments by his gallerist…  to scenes at the open air art market along the Saône River where each Sunday, heavily laden with paintings, Beck commutes by foot down the steep slopes of Lyon.

The scenic beauty of Lyon provides a rich background as cinematographer Kamil Raczko sharply penetrates both the city…. and the mind of abstract artist Steve Beck, from the reason for dispersing his paintings throughout the city, his “everyday” life as a professional working artist, to his unique method of creating abstract paintings.

You can view my CV as a larger image in my gallery "curriculum vitae". Thanks.