Red Alligator
2013
Acrylic and spray paint on wood
33 x 19 inches
Photo credit Alan Shaffer

Mop String (From the Rose of Sharon Series)
2012
Gouache on paper and mixed media
29.5 x 26 inches
Photo credit Alan Shaffer

Berkeley CA, The 70s
2012
Flash, oil, glitter on linen
20  x 16 inches
Photo credit Cherry and Martin Gallery

Lady With A Chair
2006
Flash, oil glitter on linen
22 x 28 inches
Photo credit Cherry and Martin Gallery

Arpeggio (Broken Chord)
2013
Charcoal, oil and spray paint on canvas
20 x 32 inches
Photo credit Alan Shaffer

These paintings are part of a series entitled Mercury. I’m exploring in paint the issues of abuse of power, control, image production, information, mercury and mythology. I am concerned with the abuses of the medical establishment and of the government. The misuse of mercury, the element, began at the end of the 15th century. Its misuse continues to this day and is closely linked to the rise of Autism, although hotly debated. The paintings seek to address images created to further an agenda, used by those in power. The paintings are flawed or broken to show both seen and unseen. Architecture is intended to evoke power as symbol, a place where everyday decisions have the potential to inflict terror on society.

1500
2014
Oil on canvas
40 x 60 inches
Photo credit Alan Shaffer

These paintings are part of a series entitled Mercury. I’m exploring in paint the issues of abuse of power, control, image production, information, mercury and mythology. I am concerned with the abuses of the medical establishment and of the government. The misuse of mercury, the element, began at the end of the 15th century. Its misuse continues to this day and is closely linked to the rise of Autism, although hotly debated. The paintings seek to address images created to further an agenda, used by those in power. The paintings are flawed or broken to show both seen and unseen. Architecture is intended to evoke power as symbol, a place where everyday decisions have the potential to inflict terror on society

Death by Joking
2014
Oil on canvas
79 x 118 inches
Courtesy of the artist

My approach to art is much indebted to the great classical masterpieces. Without any sense of exaggeration, I have been artistically raised within the corridors of the Prado Museum, where intimacy with the great Spanish Masters, from Velazquez to Goya, have endowed my present oeuvre with a deep sense of respect for the history and tradition to the intellectual context I come from. Over the years, I have pondered about why and what I, as an artist, could contribute to the larger world of art. At this stage in my professional development, or so it seems to me, I have acquired a comfortable balance between artistic technique, conceptual investigation, narrative depth, and an underlying sense of humor in all of my present work.

Death Salad With Pink Sauce
2013
Oil on canvas
51 x 79 inches
Courtesy of the artist

My approach to art is much indebted to the great classical masterpieces. Without any sense of exaggeration, I have been artistically raised within the corridors of the Prado Museum, where intimacy with the great Spanish Masters, from Velazquez to Goya, have endowed my present oeuvre with a deep sense of respect for the history and tradition to the intellectual context I come from. Over the years, I have pondered about why and what I, as an artist, could contribute to the larger world of art. At this stage in my professional development, or so it seems to me, I have acquired a comfortable balance between artistic technique, conceptual investigation, narrative depth, and an underlying sense of humor in all of my present work.

Camping in Bohemia
2014
Acrylic on paper
18 x 24 inches
Courtesy of the artist

Beaucage characters are rooted in memories of French plays and English movies she experienced as a child growing up in Quebec; Moliere, Goldoni, Ionesco echoed by Eisenstein, Monty Python and Woody Allen a sort of comically naïve casting of the right everyman in the wrong order of the world. In her latest works, the new mise-en-scene “in location” give her grunge primitive figures a place to act; snippets of illusory voyages, excursions in 4WD armed with GPS these Gustonian explorer, adventurer, trekker and cowboys move from the Far West to the Far North. Beaucage has a particular knack for manipulating paint alternating between deliberate pile it up of goopy impasto and loosely letting the paint move around. Each image has its central character or group and functions as portraiture. In “Camping in Bohemia” a colorful couple; a well-favored bad boy and a sweet girl are casually chatting away.

Explorer in the 70s
2014
Acrylic on paper
18 x 24 inches
Courtesy of the artist

Beaucage characters are rooted in memories of French plays and English movies she experienced as a child growing up in Quebec; Moliere, Goldoni, Ionesco echoed by Eisenstein, Monty Python and Woody Allen a sort of comically naïve casting of the right everyman in the wrong order of the world. In her latest works, the new mise-en-scene “in location” give her grunge primitive figures a place to act; snippets of illusory voyages, excursions in 4WD armed with GPS these Gustonian explorer, adventurer, trekker and cowboys move from the Far West to the Far North. Beaucage has a particular knack for manipulating paint alternating between deliberate pile it up of goopy impasto and loosely letting the paint move around. Each image has its central character or group and functions as portraiture. In “Camping in Bohemia” a colorful couple; a well-favored bad boy and a sweet girl are casually chatting away.

Winterhalter (Olga), Erased
2013
Photographic ink on paper
48 x 36 inches
Courtesy of the artist

Her process begins with a photograph of a painting. The photograph is printed on a paper to which the printer's ink will not adhere, creating a fluid surface akin to wet paint. She works the surface with a brush, causing the wet ink to lift off the paper. Once the ink's removal is complete, the stained paper retains the residue of this painterly process. This residual image is then scanned and printed, returning it to its state as a photograph of a painting.

Coello (Caterina Micaela), Erased
2013
Photographic ink on paper
48 x 28 inches
Courtesy of the artist

Her process begins with a photograph of a painting. The photograph is printed on a paper to which the printer's ink will not adhere, creating a fluid surface akin to wet paint. She works the surface with a brush, causing the wet ink to lift off the paper. Once the ink's removal is complete, the stained paper retains the residue of this painterly process. This residual image is then scanned and printed, returning it to its state as a photograph of a painting.

Untitled
2009
Oil, wax on canvas
12 x 14 inches
Courtesy of the artist

Untitled
2010
Oil, wax on canvas
11 x 15.75 inches
Courtesy of the artist

Home Recipe
2014
Oil on linen
24 x 22.5 inches
Courtesy of the artist

"Drawing for me was a shield against my dysfunctional family." Bill Jensen in conversation with Chris Martin (Brooklyn Rail, Feb, 2007)

"One thing I talked about when I was working on my thesis was the idea of transcendental meditation, where you can be doing something like raking leaves, which is this very mundane simple chore, but while you’re doing it you begin to get these very intense ideas because your body has gone into a sort of autopilot mode. It’s almost like dreaming or something, you’re free to really let your mind roam around.”
 Ted Gahl  (excerpt from interview by Corydon Cowansage)

"In the future we will make love to anything, anytime, anywhere
In the future there will be so much going on that no one will be able to keep track of it."
David Byrne  "In The future"(Knee plays, 12)

"You should keep growing. If you just settle in and start making the same old shit, everybody will say, "Oh, these paintings are just like all the other ones she has made." That would scare me."  Amy Sillman interview from the book "Inside the Painter's Studio" by Joe Fig

"The road that I pursued, and the road that I think keeps you an artist, is that no matter what happens to you, you still keep on painting." Alice Neel  "The Art of Not Sitting Pretty" by Phoebe Hoban

Into my head rose/the nothings/my life day after day/but I am leaving the shore/in my skin boat/ It came to me that I was in danger/and now the small troubles/look big/and the ache/that comes from the things/I have to do every day/big/ But only one thing/is great/only one/This/in the hut by the path/to see the day/coming out of its mother/and the light filling the world. - anonymous Inuit poem, trans. WS Merwin
thank you to L.Beck for sharing

"And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about." -John Steinbeck, East of Eden
from Brian Morris

Summer Lessons
2014
Oil on linen
48 x 60 inches
Courtesy of the artist

"Drawing for me was a shield against my dysfunctional family." Bill Jensen in conversation with Chris Martin (Brooklyn Rail, Feb, 2007)

"One thing I talked about when I was working on my thesis was the idea of transcendental meditation, where you can be doing something like raking leaves, which is this very mundane simple chore, but while you’re doing it you begin to get these very intense ideas because your body has gone into a sort of autopilot mode. It’s almost like dreaming or something, you’re free to really let your mind roam around.”
 Ted Gahl  (excerpt from interview by Corydon Cowansage)

"In the future we will make love to anything, anytime, anywhere
In the future there will be so much going on that no one will be able to keep track of it."
David Byrne  "In The future"(Knee plays, 12)

"You should keep growing. If you just settle in and start making the same old shit, everybody will say, "Oh, these paintings are just like all the other ones she has made." That would scare me."  Amy Sillman interview from the book "Inside the Painter's Studio" by Joe Fig

"The road that I pursued, and the road that I think keeps you an artist, is that no matter what happens to you, you still keep on painting." Alice Neel  "The Art of Not Sitting Pretty" by Phoebe Hoban

Into my head rose/the nothings/my life day after day/but I am leaving the shore/in my skin boat/ It came to me that I was in danger/and now the small troubles/look big/and the ache/that comes from the things/I have to do every day/big/ But only one thing/is great/only one/This/in the hut by the path/to see the day/coming out of its mother/and the light filling the world. - anonymous Inuit poem, trans. WS Merwin
thank you to L.Beck for sharing

"And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about." -John Steinbeck, East of Eden
from Brian Morris

Closed
2014
Oil on linen
77 x 69 inches
Courtesy of the artist

Working on a multitude of paintings at a time, Karl Bielik's brew of abstractions are developed in batches. Irregular canvases cover his studio walls and floors, where he shifts from one painting to another, experimenting playfully with mark making. Formal lines taken from photographs and diagrams contrast loose oily wounds, thick emulsions offset light glazes and dribbles. In contrast to this emotive imagery, banal solitary words form Bielik's titles, tempering and balancing the melancholy character of his paintings. His work has been in numerous shows at home and abroad, most notably The Marmite, Creekside and Lexmark Art Prizes in the U.K

Sliced
2012
Oil on canvas
71.5 x 64 inches
Courtesy of the artist

Working on a multitude of paintings at a time, Karl Bielik's brew of abstractions are developed in batches. Irregular canvases cover his studio walls and floors, where he shifts from one painting to another, experimenting playfully with mark making. Formal lines taken from photographs and diagrams contrast loose oily wounds, thick emulsions offset light glazes and dribbles. In contrast to this emotive imagery, banal solitary words form Bielik's titles, tempering and balancing the melancholy character of his paintings. His work has been in numerous shows at home and abroad, most notably The Marmite, Creekside and Lexmark Art Prizes in the U.K

Untitled
2014
Oil on canvas
96 x 84 inches
Photo credit Robert Wedemeyer

Portrait Stack
2013
Oil on canvas
120 x 84 inches
Photo credit Robert Wedemeyer

Moving Wood
2014
Oil on canvased wood panel
35.5 x 31 inches
Courtesy of the artist

When I was around 8 years old I had a dream I was in a garden. I climbed this wall and realized that if I jumped over I would no longer have the protection and order of the garden and would be in the wilds. I jumped. It seems a life's choice.
Making Art is a way to share the totality of what I've seen, touched and what has touched me. I believe the making of a painting needs that moment of epiphany and a trace of how the imagery conveyed thru paint was discovered and experienced by the artist. Not a graphic notation of the language of experience but the mystery of it.
For me art is a personal odyssey. A vehicle to carry me forward and find some deeper unity in what is happening in and around me. Art is a slow burn, working its gift on individuals. It is based on a life lived worked into a liquid space. I want my paintings to be a haunted living presence that reveals to the viewer passion, intellect, mystery and that changes with each day’s new light. My work is experiential, non-formulaic. Painting is a belief system that asks as Borges stated, “ a momentary act of faith that reality is inferred from events not reasonings. That theories are nothing but stimuli: that the finished work frequently ignores and even contradicts them.”

One of arts chief functions is to resist the denaturing forces that are always present; those things that would take away our transcendent possibilities and turn us into stereotyped beings. For me Art is not the production of meaning but the providing of a genuine experience of what it is to be alive and in the world. Octavio Paz said that art turns the viewer into an artist. Great art is a freedom giver, offering one a sense of the breadth of one’s own possibilities, what may yet be accomplished.
As a mature artist I find I have this large vocabulary to draw from. Imagery found a decade ago is now available and malleable once again. I continue to explore the range of subject matter my painting can encompass and have access to my own history with a renewed understanding of it’s original content and a deepening understanding of how these images can continue to speak for me in paint.  I want to speak to everyday experiences, tell stories and paint about current events, this is so exciting. In Art History I continue to see my concerns expressed in new artists and old ‘friends’ continue to offer new gifts. Painting is the wish and the prayer and the offering all in one. It is an act of faith just to pick up the brush.

The Sparrows
2014
Oil on canvas
22 by 28 inches
Courtesy of the artist

When I was around 8 years old I had a dream I was in a garden. I climbed this wall and realized that if I jumped over I would no longer have the protection and order of the garden and would be in the wilds. I jumped. It seems a life's choice.
Making Art is a way to share the totality of what I've seen, touched and what has touched me. I believe the making of a painting needs that moment of epiphany and a trace of how the imagery conveyed thru paint was discovered and experienced by the artist. Not a graphic notation of the language of experience but the mystery of it.
For me art is a personal odyssey. A vehicle to carry me forward and find some deeper unity in what is happening in and around me. Art is a slow burn, working its gift on individuals. It is based on a life lived worked into a liquid space. I want my paintings to be a haunted living presence that reveals to the viewer passion, intellect, mystery and that changes with each day’s new light. My work is experiential, non-formulaic. Painting is a belief system that asks as Borges stated, “ a momentary act of faith that reality is inferred from events not reasonings. That theories are nothing but stimuli: that the finished work frequently ignores and even contradicts them.”

One of arts chief functions is to resist the denaturing forces that are always present; those things that would take away our transcendent possibilities and turn us into stereotyped beings. For me Art is not the production of meaning but the providing of a genuine experience of what it is to be alive and in the world. Octavio Paz said that art turns the viewer into an artist. Great art is a freedom giver, offering one a sense of the breadth of one’s own possibilities, what may yet be accomplished.
As a mature artist I find I have this large vocabulary to draw from. Imagery found a decade ago is now available and malleable once again. I continue to explore the range of subject matter my painting can encompass and have access to my own history with a renewed understanding of it’s original content and a deepening understanding of how these images can continue to speak for me in paint.  I want to speak to everyday experiences, tell stories and paint about current events, this is so exciting. In Art History I continue to see my concerns expressed in new artists and old ‘friends’ continue to offer new gifts. Painting is the wish and the prayer and the offering all in one. It is an act of faith just to pick up the brush.

Chasing the Rabbit
2014
Acrylic on panel
24 x 24 inches
Courtesy of the artist

The pleasures of sight are elusive and unexpected. The pursuit of them drives us into the future.

In these paintings Japanese kitsch meets French rococo (with a nod to1970's Americana). Not as random or frivolous as it might sound, this particular deconstruction tentatively entitled "Living in the Pink and Green" is in service of an attempt to provide a place where, if the time is right, an eyeball will stop, go back, and proceed again. It is this freewheeling rogue eyeball that is so elusive and yet so enjoyable, which gives rise to the pleasures of sight.

My last paintings were abstracted television images, frame by frame. Television seems particularly apt, maybe even designed to move eyeballs. These paintings although still heavily influenced by television are actually landscapes or maps (topological landscapes).

Marie Antoinette mashed up with Hello Kitty in pursuit of the rogue eyeball.

Love Action (Little Monkey)
2014
Acrylic on panel
32 by 32 inches
Courtesy of the artist

The pleasures of sight are elusive and unexpected. The pursuit of them drives us into the future.

In these paintings Japanese kitsch meets French rococo (with a nod to1970's Americana). Not as random or frivolous as it might sound, this particular deconstruction tentatively entitled "Living in the Pink and Green" is in service of an attempt to provide a place where, if the time is right, an eyeball will stop, go back, and proceed again. It is this freewheeling rogue eyeball that is so elusive and yet so enjoyable, which gives rise to the pleasures of sight.

My last paintings were abstracted television images, frame by frame. Television seems particularly apt, maybe even designed to move eyeballs. These paintings although still heavily influenced by television are actually landscapes or maps (topological landscapes).

Marie Antoinette mashed up with Hello Kitty in pursuit of the rogue eyeball.

Untitled
2014
Oil on linen
20 x 24 inches
Courtesy of the artist

Kathleen Melian’s paintings are remains of structures and structures of remains.
Her interest lies in the human intersection with the natural world and of existence on the edge of society.

Untitled
2014
Oil on canvas over panel
84 x 72 inches
Courtesy of the artist

Kathleen Melian’s paintings are remains of structures and structures of remains.
Her interest lies in the human intersection with the natural world and of existence on the edge of society.

Ashley Bravin
Dog Fight in Kabul
2011
Oil on canvas
72 x 72 inches
Courtesy of the artist

The Boxer
2011
Oil on canvas
72 x 72 inches
Courtesy of the artist

Untitled
2014
Acrylic, pencil, oil paint, linseed oil, household cleaner and matchsticks on canvas
36 x 24 inches
Courtesy of the artist

Untitled
2014
Acrylic, pencil, oil paint and turpentine on canvas
30 x 24 inches
Courtesy of the artist

Cloud 12
2013
Acrylic and ink on cradled panel
9 by 12 inches
Courtesy of the artist

Cloud Started as a series of experiments in paint application processes.  I wanted to play with paint in the same way that my six-year-old son creates “science” experiments or “cooks.”  In order to create some sort of base or control portion of the experiment, the actions took place with acrylic and ink on identical 9” x 12” panels.  I left myself open to the results of physics and responded to the, often surprising, effects and textures.  As I continued, I became more involved in specifically recreating and dramatizing certain characteristics.  I became entranced with the rivulets, fractals, sprays and drips created by certain actions.  I also became fascinated with juxtaposing extremes from quick, simple actions to days of layering and meticulous line work.  Often, I worked on four or five panels at a time.  Some felt finished within an hour; others took weeks or months.  As I wandered, I sometimes connected my physical actions and experiments with a thought, other times I was purely motivated by what I saw the paint do.

As I finished panels I laid them right next to the other finished panels.  I enjoyed the abrupt changes in the colors, shapes and documented actions as the panels sat side by side.  I started to think about the dramatic changes in contrast at the edges where one panel would meet another.  It reminded me of Internet searches.  When I first had access to the Internet I remember going to search engines and asking random questions from the banal to the perverse; just because I could.  Some of the searches would take me on a journey of hours of jumping from one site to another, from one site’s links to another’s, until I found I could go no further; a dead-end or too far into territories tangential.

This process of searching, I found later, was actually a very effective way to research a topic.  I started broad and open, following and responding to the information my actions brought.  I followed the trails until they ended.  As I worked on Cloud panels I realized my process of play was analogous to the Internet search process.  For example, I had to start with some sort of decision but after that I found myself in a loop of responding until I reached a dead end; a finished panel.

As I thought more about the reference to searching I pondered my recent habit of entering just the beginning of an open-ended question into a Google search.  Google pulls up a list of the most recent globally popular searches that start with the letters or words users enter into the search box.  This search feature is coined, “Google Guesses.”

I became excited about integrating the open-ended searches with the paintings to physically connect the analogy.  The finalized installation includes the first panels made before I formally thought about the fact that they were a kind of search in addition to the later panels integrating the Google searches as text images.  At last count 84 panels have been completed.

The panels can be connected and installed in countless ways for new formal and conceptual effects.  I enjoy the Lego-like way in which the panels can be installed in an infinite number of designs or in differing numbers of panels. I see the almost limitless ways of creating new works with the building block panels as analogous to how I interact with the internet.

Cloud 23
2013
Acrylic and ink on cradled panel
9 x 12 inches
Courtesy of the artist

Cloud Started as a series of experiments in paint application processes.  I wanted to play with paint in the same way that my six-year-old son creates “science” experiments or “cooks.”  In order to create some sort of base or control portion of the experiment, the actions took place with acrylic and ink on identical 9” x 12” panels.  I left myself open to the results of physics and responded to the, often surprising, effects and textures.  As I continued, I became more involved in specifically recreating and dramatizing certain characteristics.  I became entranced with the rivulets, fractals, sprays and drips created by certain actions.  I also became fascinated with juxtaposing extremes from quick, simple actions to days of layering and meticulous line work.  Often, I worked on four or five panels at a time.  Some felt finished within an hour; others took weeks or months.  As I wandered, I sometimes connected my physical actions and experiments with a thought, other times I was purely motivated by what I saw the paint do.

As I finished panels I laid them right next to the other finished panels.  I enjoyed the abrupt changes in the colors, shapes and documented actions as the panels sat side by side.  I started to think about the dramatic changes in contrast at the edges where one panel would meet another.  It reminded me of Internet searches.  When I first had access to the Internet I remember going to search engines and asking random questions from the banal to the perverse; just because I could.  Some of the searches would take me on a journey of hours of jumping from one site to another, from one site’s links to another’s, until I found I could go no further; a dead-end or too far into territories tangential.

This process of searching, I found later, was actually a very effective way to research a topic.  I started broad and open, following and responding to the information my actions brought.  I followed the trails until they ended.  As I worked on Cloud panels I realized my process of play was analogous to the Internet search process.  For example, I had to start with some sort of decision but after that I found myself in a loop of responding until I reached a dead end; a finished panel.

As I thought more about the reference to searching I pondered my recent habit of entering just the beginning of an open-ended question into a Google search.  Google pulls up a list of the most recent globally popular searches that start with the letters or words users enter into the search box.  This search feature is coined, “Google Guesses.”

I became excited about integrating the open-ended searches with the paintings to physically connect the analogy.  The finalized installation includes the first panels made before I formally thought about the fact that they were a kind of search in addition to the later panels integrating the Google searches as text images.  At last count 84 panels have been completed.

The panels can be connected and installed in countless ways for new formal and conceptual effects.  I enjoy the Lego-like way in which the panels can be installed in an infinite number of designs or in differing numbers of panels. I see the almost limitless ways of creating new works with the building block panels as analogous to how I interact with the internet.