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VIDEO: Joan Interviewed 2011
Interview video by Nutter Productions, Arcata, California
About This Blog
I had originally intended this blog to be a venue for exhibiting the small, very personal paintings that I make, the ones I don’t put on my web site. It has, however, evolved into something else. I like the thought and research that the blog posts entail and have allowed the writings to become my priority. I also enjoy the freedom to show work no longer in my possession and works in progress and photos of the studio process. This has led me to design another web site which I am currently at work on and which I will announce here when it is finished. My original web site, www.joangold.com, does not include the miniatures. The new site will be devoted to them and I will set it up to make direct sales. The other, original site, will still be the place to find my larger paintings which sell through my galleries and consultants. The rationale behind this is that the small sizes make it easy for me to do the shipping, the prices are too low to have a middle-man and I am increasingly impressed by how the internet can be used for sales of art (and anything else). Of course, there is also the ever-constant need to generate income while taking the least amount of time away from the studio.
About My Work
My work is about color. There is no hidden meaning, nothing to understand other than what the eye perceives.
I favor collage for its flexibility and for the variety of materials that can be utilized. I make my collage materials using a variety of media; acrylic paint is basic, as are, to a lesser degree, pastel, oil pastel, graphite, colored pencil and digital printing. Important aspects of the process are glazing with transparent paint layers and underpainting, both techniques that date from the fifteenth century.
The visual arts can be made to communicate joy, balance, harmony, beauty and serenity. These are qualities that I need to provide balance in my own life and which I offer to my viewer. In my studio, with my materials, I create a place of refuge, filled with color and light.
Marianne Moore said poetry "comes into and steadies the soul". Art can do that.
I am a painter and collage maker. I grew up In Brooklyn, New York, studied art at The Cooper Union and then left the country on a painting fellowship. I spent twenty-four years teaching in Venezuela and raised four fine children. I am now growing old, happily dedicated to my work, in Eureka, California.
I choose titles to name my paintings as you would name a baby or a pet animal. They need to be identified so when the name is mentioned, the being or thing referred to comes to mind. I choose words that I like as I did in a series that had titles that ended with “ion”: Anticipation, Coronation, Innovation, Recreation, and Conception were some of the titles. I did not choose words like defamation, fumigation, cancelation or the like. For another group of paintings I used the names of flowers. Since I tend to produce large groups of works with a similar vision, there must be a great variety of names to work with. The names of stars that title some of the miniatures I am exhibiting here are particularly pleasing as they seem to me to be as abstract as the little paintings. They can be translated but I prefer to keep them as devoid of meaning as are my paintings. Stars are wonderful to look at and that is what I intend with my work.
Brooklyn-born abstract painter Joan Gold received her art education at The Cooper Union and The Brooklyn Museum in New York City, and at the Escuela de Bellas Artes in Caracas, Venezuela.
Gold has had solo exhibitions at the Galeria Arte Vigente in Caracas, the Lisa Harris Gallery in Seattle, the Himovitz Gallery in Sacramento, the Atlee Gallery, the Piante Gallery and California State University’s First Street Gallery in Eureka, California, amongst others. Her paintings have been shown at the California Museum of Art in Santa Rosa, and the gallery of the Cooper Union in New York City.
In 1955 she was awarded a U.S. State Department fellowship to paint and study in Venezuela, where she remained for twenty four years. She retired as Associate Professor of the Universidad Metropolitana, and has lived and worked in Humboldt County, California since returning to the U.S.
For paintings that do not fit a standard size frame you might want to consult a professional picture framer. Another option is an easy and inexpensive frame kit that can be purchased from American Frame. “Choose your frame, mat, glazing, etc, then submit your dimensions. An easy-to-assemble frame kit will be on its way”. They cut everything to your specifications and include simple instructions for assembly.
And how nice it was to open up Friday's paper and see it in there.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad to have lived long enough to see the Internet as well.