• About
  • Current
  • Upcoming
  • Projects
  • Night Studio
  • Books
  • Editions
  • Contact
  • CODE
Menu

Marisa Newman Projects

Street Address
New York, NY
Phone Number

Your Custom Text Here

Marisa Newman Projects

  • About
  • Current
  • Upcoming
  • Projects
  • Night Studio
  • Books
  • Editions
  • Contact
  • CODE
Effect_2018_10x8.jpg

Helen Beckman From Blue

Marisa Newman Projects is pleased to present From Blue, new paintings by Helen Beckman. The exhibition title is a reference to the underpainting in blue gouache that Helen Beckman lays down prior to commencing an oil painting. The gouache markings pool and disperse on the gesso surface, creating an opportunity to incorporate or veil its presence with the subsequent addition of oil paint layers. In the finished painting, the blue can play a major role or can almost disappear. Sometimes an imprimatura (a layer of varnish) seals the gouache; other times the velvety surface of the water medium is left to define an area. Similar to Odilon Redon’s quixotic landscape Beckman’s landscapes create an illusion of a real place through an accumulation of marks and suggestive gestures thus subverting traditional pastoral spaces to the point of abstraction.

Beckman spent a few years in the 90's working exclusively with ultramarine blue gouache on a project of primate portraits. These works dealt in liminal times of day and played with ideas of anthropomorphism. When Beckman returned to oil painting, she imported the mood of the blue washes and marks as an underpinning for the worlds created in these paintings.

The work in From Blue is described by the artist as "transmogrified landscapes." We are drawn in by a sense of a specific space, but the threads of that story are cut and re-tied in the process of painting. Each painting coheres at a different density. Beckman states "I prefer a painting to be held together by mysterious rather than obvious forces." Beckman's forms and narratives often sidestep easy definition, but they are definitely born from a love of painterly painting.

Helen Beckman (b.1960) works and lives in Brooklyn. She received her MFA from Indiana University in 1986.

Helen Beckman From Blue

Marisa Newman Projects is pleased to present From Blue, new paintings by Helen Beckman. The exhibition title is a reference to the underpainting in blue gouache that Helen Beckman lays down prior to commencing an oil painting. The gouache markings pool and disperse on the gesso surface, creating an opportunity to incorporate or veil its presence with the subsequent addition of oil paint layers. In the finished painting, the blue can play a major role or can almost disappear. Sometimes an imprimatura (a layer of varnish) seals the gouache; other times the velvety surface of the water medium is left to define an area. Similar to Odilon Redon’s quixotic landscape Beckman’s landscapes create an illusion of a real place through an accumulation of marks and suggestive gestures thus subverting traditional pastoral spaces to the point of abstraction.

Beckman spent a few years in the 90's working exclusively with ultramarine blue gouache on a project of primate portraits. These works dealt in liminal times of day and played with ideas of anthropomorphism. When Beckman returned to oil painting, she imported the mood of the blue washes and marks as an underpinning for the worlds created in these paintings.

The work in From Blue is described by the artist as "transmogrified landscapes." We are drawn in by a sense of a specific space, but the threads of that story are cut and re-tied in the process of painting. Each painting coheres at a different density. Beckman states "I prefer a painting to be held together by mysterious rather than obvious forces." Beckman's forms and narratives often sidestep easy definition, but they are definitely born from a love of painterly painting.

Helen Beckman (b.1960) works and lives in Brooklyn. She received her MFA from Indiana University in 1986.

Amidst_2015_10x10.jpg
Ceres _2017_30x24.jpg
Effect_2018_10x8.jpg
Escape  2018  14 x 11_  Beckman.JPG
Gathering_2016_10x8.jpg
Georgie_2015_14x11.jpg
Muse Musing_2015_10x8.jpg
Phase_2016_10x10.jpg
Rain_2017_10x10.jpg
Sculptress_2017_10x8 .jpg
Secret  2018  8 x 6_ Beckman.JPG
Song  2018 10 x 8_ Beckman.JPG
Tide of Humber_2018_40x36.jpg
Tome_2018, 40x36.jpg
Trap_2017_11x14.jpg
Veil  2018 10x8_ Beckman.JPG
Work in Progress_2018_22x10.jpg

38 WEST 32ND STREET, SUITE 1602 NEW YORK, NY 10001    TEL 212.274.9166   CONTACT@MARISANEWMAN.COM