Brenda Berg

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At Left:    Montechiaro, oil on canvas

Informed by early spiritual works painted on easily transported flattened metals, I have chosen the Biblically charged fruit and wine as subject matter on a metal plate. Today, aluminum lithographic plates are professionally prepared to absorb oil and are ideal for heavy applications of oil paint---and my vanitas dialogue with the ephemeral la dolce vita.

At left:   Apples and David, oil on aluminum

Pair Series: 

Pears 

(private collection), 

oil on aluminum

Pair Series: 

Grapefruit 

oil on aluminum

Manipulating paint on a surface is an active experience between the hand and the mind, the body and the media.  My current still life paintings examine formal relationships between texture, color, compositional size, and media. For me, the manipulation of living substance includes experimenting with glazed grounds and thick oil paint on a variety of “canvas” surfaces. Early fresco surfaces were replaced by easily transported canvas and wood panels. Carefully prepared metal plates were also a popular surface for oil paint. 

 Today, aluminum lithographic plates are professionally prepared to absorb oil and are ideal for heavy applications of oil paint. In the No. Two Series, I glaze finely sanded lithographic plates with several layers of brick red oil primer and allow it to rest overnight. Before the glaze is completely dry, the compositional draft—the oil underpainting—is started. As the oil paint dries and more paint is added, cracks often appear giving the pairs of fruit a sense of time and history.

According to Oliveira, the painter experiences paint as a “living substance.” It isn’t something “you cover a canvas with.” Painting is an almost sacred experience between the painter and the paint. The product of that experience is an object that can be shared by all.

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Drawings from the exhibit

"Revealed"

Each day is new, so each drawing—with words written on the back—lets me know how I’m doing… I now have 110 drawing-diary pages… I refer to these diaries as “tender compulsions.” 

 Louise Bourgeois*

Like Bourgeois, I like to think that the figurative drawings filling my c-files are “tender compulsions.”

Drawing is as fundamental as breathing. It is waxy crayon scribbles across construction paper, etched marks in a stone, red earth staining stretched leather hides, the glowing pixels on a screen, the lyrical calligraphic brush mark, the velvety charcoal tone, the detailed architectural rendering… Drawing is the beginning of a mental and physical process that culminates in a visual object—it lets us know how we are doing.

Each of my Revealed drawings catch an artist in the process of making art.  Working with graphite, black chalk pastel, sumi ink and gouache, each figure emerges from the paper’s surface, revealing the mysterious process of creation.