Freudian Snapshots
Rebecca Moda
Amanda Besl’s tiny figurative oil paintings combine stark contrast, vivid color and gorgeous texture with the immediacy of photography. She creates images of startling beauty and menace, evoking the swirling blend of childish vulnerability and adult sexuality that defines female adolescence.
Besl’s use of paint and her tactile surfaces serve to transform each photo into a conduit of sensual appeal, layered over the preexisting appeal of the subjects themselves and imbuing them with an almost transcendent beauty. The work is inherently feminine, and the subjects female, though one can sense the presence of the male in its absence. Besl’s work is powerful in its intimacy, and in what it reveals through posture, clothing and expression, about what it is to be a girl.
She employs Freudian elements, such as fetishising masculinity through the image and utilizing expressions of oral fixation and body language, suggesting the obsessive yearning of adolescence with disturbing clarity. The girls are found caught in a moment, but not always caught willingly. The viewer feels like an intruder, and yet it is the sham candor of her teenage models that makes it unclear exactly what is being interrupted in Besl’s work.
These cinematic scenes pop from the wall off beveled edges, balancing the line between object and image. They are scaled as such that they must be held in order to be painted. The artist uses a single cat’s whisker for fine detail. The miniature size of her pieces–a scale ranging from 3" x 3" and rarely exceeding 8" x 10"–conveys the secrecy and mystery of the young girl’s world.
It is this secrecy, yearning and vulnerability that make up Besl’s medium. The snapshot quality of the pieces makes them real, each a frozen moment that seems at once familiar and distant. We almost recognize these girls, these scenes, from our own lives, but they stir apprehension rather than nostalgia.
Her subjects are poised in equal proximity to bliss and trauma, in transition from the serenity of childhood to adult reality in a modern society that worships youth. The contemporary art critic and writer Saul Ostrow once compared Besl’s paintings to James Joyce’s novels. Her works form a disjointed narrative of insecurity and sensuality, hinting at the darker secrets these girls will carry with them into their adult lives.
Besl studied writing arts and fine art at SUNY Oswego. She received her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in painting in 2001 where she studied under Beverly Fishman. Besl’s work has been shown in galleries across the country including Lemberg Gallery in Ferndale, MI. She was included in this year’s AAF Contemporary Art Fair. Her work can also be seen at Lyons Wier Gallery in New York City where she is represented. She also exhibits at Aeroplastics Contemporary, an art gallery in Brussels, Belgium. The artist lives and works in Buffalo, NY with her husband and three cats. To view more of Besl’s work, visit her website at www.superpaintgirl.com
