Venice via Chicago and California

Canals of Venice, Mixed media on canvas, 61cm x 51cm by Rodney Beecher Roberts

Rodney on Venice:

Venice in all its historic and poetic glory has seemingly denied the existence of the industrial revolution, and despite its teeming throngs of exuberant tourists, manages to exude a tranquility that permeates the human soul. In this series of paintings I have attempted to fuse this dichotomy of feelings: movement and stillness; excitement and calm through use of multiple layers of colour splashed, daubed, scrawled but mostly flowing over and running down the canvas to dissolve and re-emerge as a sentiment or feeling from a line of some of my favourite poems about Venice. 

Sotto il ponte, acrylic on canvas, 80cm x 80cm by Tina Mammoser

Tina on Venice: 

 Trying to refind light from dark, so not to have a dead flat white but a white with luminescence - with colour coming through the glow to evoke a colour relationship. Coming from a long period of charcoal drawing of water surfaces, I'm trying to discover the colours in Venice, to coordinate them into my existing ideas for water surfaces. Looking for references to the light and shadow, reflection and refraction, pattern and water movement. These create a different memory of Venice. Tranquil spaces of line, colour and light rather than landscape.

You can see Venice paintings from both of us at the AmericanBrits exhibition in January. 

Abstraction: conscious vs subconscious

 Excerpt from artist conversation:

 

Tina

"You have this whole thing where you don't sketch because it inhibits your creativity, and the fact that you work with so many materials and you're much freer. I'm so precise with my stuff, and I'm always thinking when I'm actually doing it. I'm always analysing it with each layer of paint."

Rodney

"Unfortunately thought does creep as I'm painting and I hate that! It invariably makes me take the painting in a different direction than it wants to go, as they say. My subscious is trying to do something and my thought process gets in... no! Stop that!"

Tina

"You want your subconscious to take over."

Rodney

"Yeah "

Tina

"And I want my intellect to take over."

Rodney

"Anytime my intellectual gets in the way, I hate the painting 2 weeks after it's finished and I have to paint over it. It misses. If a painter or artist starts with the end in mind and can achieve that end, that's great. But that's not where I work from. I can't do that. And every time my thought process gets in the way it changes the painting and it doesn't work any more."

Tina

"If I am painting and I let my emotion take over, which isn't to say I'm not emotional when I'm painting - I have a sort of joy from it - but because I am so analytical if I start painting for catharsis I end up finishing a painting and looking at it and thinking 'my god that sucks'.  So I start with an idea, then a plan, and I try to stick to the plan, or replan. I like to know there's a balance and a sense of making your eye move around in a specific way."

See the coast paintings tina-m.com

Mark the Date!

Two-man exhibition by Tina Mammoser (that's me!) and Rodney Beecher Roberts...

We're excited about this chance to work together and share our very different takes on abstraction, from the American and British perspectives!

Rodney and I also recorded and transcribed several conversations together, so check back often for sneak peeks of the chats.

AMERICANBRITS

14-19 January 2013
An exhibition of work by American/British artists Tina Mammoser and Rodney Beecher.
Gallery 27, Cork Street
London W1S 3NG
Tina's Art: tina-m.com
Rodney's Art: artbybeecher.com