interactive studio blog project installment no. 17: kate beck

I have tremendous respect for Kate and her work. I've learned much from her wonderful blog and how she speaks about her process.

Untitled Graphite on Arches Printmaking Paper
42 x 72, 2009 © Kate Beck 2009

My words:

We moved into a new house last year and I consequently moved my studio, as well. I now live and work “… in a field, on a beach, on a pile of rocks in the Atlantic...”. We’re building it out, so it’s a challenge to be working in the same space I’m renovating, but it's coming along. All together, it is about 950 sq. ft., the entire bottom level of the house, which opens up into the field, looking out to sea. Quiet, and nice. The largest space is for painting, and I have a room for drawing – the clean room – and another for storage. The light is mostly artificial but the studio faces south and I do get natural light for drawing, especially. I’ve never had a studio in my living space before but it is working out well.

My drawings and paintings are created as an intuitive response to materials placed within a given space: graphite on paper, paint on substrate, objects within a room. I consider them as objects, concrete elements of structure. I believe white to be the most inherently beautiful color as it carries with it the potential to simultaneously expose and negate space. I believe black to be the most innately powerful color as it is defined by the presence of light as well as by the absence of light.

The mind’s natural inclination is to identify a problem and work it out, a process of thinking and re-thinking. My aesthetic is founded in formal principles and methodologies of drawing, which I consider the most visual equivalent to thought.

I named my house and my studio White Spot.

Kate Beck