Beth Letain
More like trees (4), 2023
Painting - Acrylic and oil on canvas
170 x 140 cm (67 x 55 in)
$ 25,000.00
Further images
This painting is an example of Letain’s newer works, which omit the fields of white primer so characteristic of her oeuvre until now. Colored fields of bright red and blue...
This painting is an example of Letain’s newer works, which omit the fields of white primer so characteristic of her oeuvre until now. Colored fields of bright red and blue dominate the canvas, which Letain considers as a type of sculptural material into which she carves with her paintbrush, and which build on her geometric visual language. The dense and saturated colors vibrate when resting side by side, creating an energy that is both sharp and intense. Letain does not use a ruler, and some brushstrokes are visible, leaving corrections, mistakes and painted movement highly visible.
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• Letain sees herself more as a drawer than a painter. She uses small pieces of paper on which she creates numerous small sketches until one of them resonates more than the others, which she then translates onto a larger canvas.
• This practice stems from her university years when she worked part-time in a public library and constantly had small pieces of paper on hand to jot down book references requested by visitors. This is how she began using this format for her preliminary sketches, which she has stuck to ever since. In these small sketches, she mainly uses watercolor or gouache.
• She is particularly intrigued by seeing what happens when she transposes these small gouache or watercolor paintings into large-format oil and acrylic works on canvas. This change in scale became possible when she moved to Berlin and had more space to experiment with the scale of her work.
• There is something very joyful and insatiable in the way Letain approaches her practice. She enjoys experimenting within constraints and limits that she imposes on herself.
• She doesn’t describe herself as a minimalist painter, and she has no qualms about viewers projecting figurative or narrative interpretations onto her works. The titles she chooses are, in fact, a way to invite viewers to experience the artwork differently, to expand their understanding of the painting. Each title serves as a cue, a suggestion to look at the work in a certain way, yet it remains just one of several potential interpretations.
• Letain does not use a ruler, and some brushstrokes are visible, leaving corrections, mistakes and painted movement highly visible.
———————
• Letain sees herself more as a drawer than a painter. She uses small pieces of paper on which she creates numerous small sketches until one of them resonates more than the others, which she then translates onto a larger canvas.
• This practice stems from her university years when she worked part-time in a public library and constantly had small pieces of paper on hand to jot down book references requested by visitors. This is how she began using this format for her preliminary sketches, which she has stuck to ever since. In these small sketches, she mainly uses watercolor or gouache.
• She is particularly intrigued by seeing what happens when she transposes these small gouache or watercolor paintings into large-format oil and acrylic works on canvas. This change in scale became possible when she moved to Berlin and had more space to experiment with the scale of her work.
• There is something very joyful and insatiable in the way Letain approaches her practice. She enjoys experimenting within constraints and limits that she imposes on herself.
• She doesn’t describe herself as a minimalist painter, and she has no qualms about viewers projecting figurative or narrative interpretations onto her works. The titles she chooses are, in fact, a way to invite viewers to experience the artwork differently, to expand their understanding of the painting. Each title serves as a cue, a suggestion to look at the work in a certain way, yet it remains just one of several potential interpretations.
• Letain does not use a ruler, and some brushstrokes are visible, leaving corrections, mistakes and painted movement highly visible.