centre d'artistes.artist run centre
Discussion with the artist: Sun 05/10/08 at 3pm
Text by Nadia Kurd click here
Emily Bennett Beck’s impulse is to embellish. She is particularly drawn to painting images of women she finds in the popular media and to images of characters conjured up through her literary-inspired imagination. She then pushes these images to and past their breaking points until the images become uncomfortably intense. Though she empathizes toward her subjects, the paintings become at times grotesque, overly sentimental, and often awkward. The paintings reflect an unceasing attraction to tragedy, excesses of glamour, and personal drama made public. The paintings also represent her tendency to become enmeshed in her conception of the « characters’ » points of view. By appropriating and altering images of romance and historic novel heroines and celebrities, she works to legitimize these ungainly figures for the contemporary present. The paintings reference the art historical past, and aim to represent a conflicted vision of femininity.
Emily Bennett Beck was born in Minnesota (United States) and has a B.A. in Studio Art and Psychology from St. Olaf College, and an M.A., and M.F.A. in Painting from the University of Wisconsin in Madison. She has exhibited throughout the United States, including cities such as: Madison, Minneapolis, and New York. She has taught at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and St. Lawrence University in Canton, and is currently teaching at State University of New York and Clarkson University in Potsdam.