Canyon.White, 2008. oil on linen. 84 x 64 inches. Kate Beck/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
A constant investigation into light and space has been Kate Beck’s aesthetic experience with visual art. Her physical, structured works materialize through formal criteria of organized scale and color engaging historical techniques of oil painting within conditions of 20th-century American abstraction. Influences include philosophies of 15th century Chinese landscape painting and poetry and the nuance of color and perspective developed in late 14th-17th century Flemish, Netherlandish, and northern Italian painting.
Recent fascinations include experimentation with lens-based image in the landscape, including conceptualization by overpainting, presenting fresh opportunities for feeling and illusionistic space, and furthering the obscurity of realism, and the nature of abstraction.
Referencing both the personal and global cultural experience, Kate Beck teachesThe Cosmic Landscape and Culture, Identity, & The Overpainted Image as occasional faculty at Maine Media Workshops & College in Rockland, Maine.
PLEASE NOTE: Due to accounts being repeatedly hijacked, cloned and stolen Kate Beck no longer participates with Instagram or FaceBook
Born in Maine, USA, 1956, Kate Beck has studied literature, writing and art history at the University of Maine and painting at Maine College of Art with Edwin Douglas and Johnnie Winona Ross. In 1978 she was awarded a full scholarship in writing and visual art from Bennington College in Vermont. She has a Masters of Fine Art in Interdisciplinary Art with a focus of critical cultural theory and philosophy from Goddard College in Vermont. She is an American painter and writer.
Her first solo exhibition in NYC was at Masters & Pelavin in TriBeCa in 2010. Professional relationships include: M-nuspace; Kentler International Drawing Space; The Drawing Center; September; daphne.art; Portland Museum of Art; New Mexico Museum of Contemporary Art; parisCONCRET, France; Gorcums Museum, and Kunst-Element, The Netherlands; PIT Project Space, Belgium; and Stiftung Konzeptuelle Soest, Germany, among others. She has collaborated with artists and other creatives including Berg, Jones, Sarvis Dance and Choreography, Maine; Tracy Silver Motion, LA, California; Ivo Ringe, painter, curator Germany; Fiona Robinson, artist, writer, curator UK; Brito Rodriguez Arquitectura, Portugal; Museo Morandi, Italy; Thomas A Clark, poet, Scotland; and Peter Foolen Editions, The Netherlands. Her works are collected internationally.
Brito Rodriguez Arquitectura, Lisboa, Portugal, 2015. photo: Erin Little