Critics Statement:
"Four years ago, passing thru the Bay Area, I visited Beth at her San Francisco home and was treated to a very different style of work from what I’d previously known. Paintings were still executed in a botanical style. Many similar images to those used on earlier ceramic forms are now used to explore new territory in a twist on two-dimensionality. Much enthused by this transition from three-dimensions to two, I was more impressed after visiting her Sonoma County studio this past May (2014).
Amidst the comfort of her rural sanctuary in Penngrove, I was treated to a comprehensive preview of her upcoming SEBASTOPOL exhibition. Flowers surrounding her home again show themselves in assorted guises carefully painted with botanical detail. Her next step is to deconstruct the purity of these traditionally stretched on-paper images with a variety of collaged and overdrawn additives. For instance brown paper tape remains to ape a framed border while ring-torn chads beg attention on another side of the same artwork. Variety is a very serious and certainly not at all a frivolous element that moves finished work to new planes of meaning and deeper dimension.
Painting outside the lines, abandoning strictures set by her at the very inception of a piece, makes each final image visually stronger by adding considerable depth in the process. But Beth is both brash and sensitive at the same time. One can feel her creativity palpably wavering between those two extremes even as images are solidified and then entombed within simple framing. These newest works, jumping outside their originally conceived formatting, artistically recall ancestral ceramic pieces that demanded she remain inside given thrown or slab-built shapes.
A zest for innovation has taken her down many paths over the decades since we first met in the ‘70s but I think all will agree she has turned onto a major highway of discovery that will find many supporters eager to see future stops along the way. "
Amaury Saint-Gilles
Art Critic, Author, Gentleman farmer in Hawaii
"Four years ago, passing thru the Bay Area, I visited Beth at her San Francisco home and was treated to a very different style of work from what I’d previously known. Paintings were still executed in a botanical style. Many similar images to those used on earlier ceramic forms are now used to explore new territory in a twist on two-dimensionality. Much enthused by this transition from three-dimensions to two, I was more impressed after visiting her Sonoma County studio this past May (2014).
Amidst the comfort of her rural sanctuary in Penngrove, I was treated to a comprehensive preview of her upcoming SEBASTOPOL exhibition. Flowers surrounding her home again show themselves in assorted guises carefully painted with botanical detail. Her next step is to deconstruct the purity of these traditionally stretched on-paper images with a variety of collaged and overdrawn additives. For instance brown paper tape remains to ape a framed border while ring-torn chads beg attention on another side of the same artwork. Variety is a very serious and certainly not at all a frivolous element that moves finished work to new planes of meaning and deeper dimension.
Painting outside the lines, abandoning strictures set by her at the very inception of a piece, makes each final image visually stronger by adding considerable depth in the process. But Beth is both brash and sensitive at the same time. One can feel her creativity palpably wavering between those two extremes even as images are solidified and then entombed within simple framing. These newest works, jumping outside their originally conceived formatting, artistically recall ancestral ceramic pieces that demanded she remain inside given thrown or slab-built shapes.
A zest for innovation has taken her down many paths over the decades since we first met in the ‘70s but I think all will agree she has turned onto a major highway of discovery that will find many supporters eager to see future stops along the way. "
Amaury Saint-Gilles
Art Critic, Author, Gentleman farmer in Hawaii
