RUST PAINTINGS
Artist's Statement
Agnes de Bethune
My images are convincing only in as far as I am able to feel at one with the objects depicted. There is no way to describe this process except to say that you have to "become" the thing you are painting. Anything less is bound to fail. As to method and technique, it simply follows from the above. The process can be difficult though. Often, I'm completely at a loss. I have no idea how to do what I'm doing, where next to go and if I don't trust the painting itself, then, I get myself in trouble. In actual practice, I feel the best work comes when I follow my instincts and don't force the result and just let the picture tell me what it wants. Of course, this is easier said than done, but the ones that involve a struggle for control are usually unsuccessful.
Every painting has to address issues of facture, of resolution and scale, and of fidelity to its source. Sometimes, my work gets very loose and I welcome it when this occurs. I have a feeling that, over time, it will get looser. Many people have commented that the rust paintings are abstract in a way. They're not really. They are actually very faithful to the source image, and it's this fidelity that provides a sort of guiding principle which allows me more gestural freedom and the kind of calligraphy in the brush work that appeals to me.
I constantly face the dilemma: "What's the point of painting anyway, why do it?" We are often told, at this point in the history of art, that painting has run its course. Particularly because my work is considered "realistic" and therefore, in the minds of many, redundant, I feel challenged to rediscover the legitimacy of painting as a means of expression in every piece. The more of it I do, the more I find new and better ways of being "in" the picture. These compositions are like little universes. There is a whole world of nonverbal, non-rational experience in each one; a chance to get lost in the image and give in to things that may be not planned, that defy logical explanation, that evoke emotions. To the extent that my work affects people in this way, I feel successful.
ABOUT THE INSTALLATION
The only way to convey the monumentality of this subject adequately was to make a mural out of these (already large) paintings. I am enormously grateful to Susan Spiller, director of Chelsea Studio Gallery, for making it possible. Over the years since it was painted, I have had to be satisfied with showing this work piecemeal. The current exhibition is the opportunity I had idealized for these paintings. The prospect of exhibiting the entire series was the impetus for me to revisit the subject matter in the form of small, experimental studies which are hung on the opposite wall.