About The Artist

I paint as a ritual for expression, exploration, and communication. I am seduced by the visual world and all that resonates beneath its surface.

Having studied classical music, dance, and the Arts- along with biology and anthropology, I find that these experiences inform my work- often in series.

Several bodies of work have evolved (sometimes in tandem) over time. Some of these works form a ‘series continuum’ as in “The Target Series/ Water Pistols, Cap Guns and Targets”, a group of works that I began to make in 1992 and which I continue to make presently.

(In 1998, at The Bay Area Youth Programs in Massachusetts, symposiums were held on the Prevention of Youth Violence. At these symposiums, as well as in the galleries at the Fuller Museum of Art in Brockton, a solo show of the “Target Series” paintings served as a forum to help at-risk teens dialogue about the violence they experienced in their lives.)

Process/Content/Inspiration

An idea will slip into my thoughts when I least expect it…alone on a walk, or in a state of quasi-sleep. I keep journals or sticky notes with quick jottings. The conception of a work happens when I am physically stopped by something that fascinates me. If it is a small enough object, I may pick it up, turn it in my hand, or hold it up to the light of day. I study it with new eyes, and recast it in paint with a new awareness. 
Sometimes I make a painting “all-at-once”, investigating the subject with my eyes and hands, paint, brush, and rags.

I often paint in a ‘direct observation’ situation…by the sea @ Cape Ann, Gloucester, for example, with my feet in the water, working just ahead of the incoming tide. The wind, the mist, the sun get all mixed up in the orchestration of the paint’s quickened movement.
 
Painting people’s faces is an engaging adventure for me. In the recent “Monday Model Series”, for example, I had just a single encounter with a visiting model or local townsperson- a small piece of an evening- to find color shapes and marks that might convey a bit of the sitter’s inner essence.

And then there are days when I simply allow the paint to take hold of the journey itself, and find that representational images may all but disappear. Through a metamorphosis of real visions along with memory images , a painting evolves. 

 

Beverly Rippel