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Andrea Belag: Matisse and Philip Guston were my primary influences as a young artist. I went to the NYSS to study with Philip Guston but he was not open to working with female students. After leaving school, I wanted to expunge his influence and I looked closely at the work of Eva Hesse and other post-minimalists and I saw the expressive potential of abstraction. My first series of abstract paintings were painted with red and white enamel paint and I used a grid to control the illusionistic space. |
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“Everyone has an opinion on ‘what’ I am painting.”
Andrea Belag, Aim, 2011, 22 x 30 inches, oil on linen, courtesy of the artist.
Jennifer Samet: How did you begin to work abstractly?
Andrea Belag: Matisse and Philip Guston were my primary influences as a young artist. I went to the NYSS to study with Philip Guston but he was not open to working with female students. After leaving school, I wanted to expunge his influence and I looked closely at the work of Eva Hesse and other post-minimalists and I saw the expressive potential of abstraction. My first series of abstract paintings were painted with red and white enamel paint and I used a grid to control the illusionistic space.
JS: What is your process like?
AB: I paint broad planes of color to begin a painting and I paint the entire painting each work session. I am looking for something I haven’t seen before and if I don’t succeed I take the paint off with medium. Sometimes if the paint dries or if painting is not going well for several sessions I have to destroy the canvas. I just went through a short period when I tossed several paintings. It was discouraging, but I have refocused and something is happening now. Generally I can keep a canvas going for almost a week but my best paintings come together quickly. I think the painting is finished when any more work would make it a different painting.
JS: And your paints and brushes?
AB: I like transparent, synthetic pigments. I don’t do very well with earth colors although I try them occasionally. I am trying to vary my palette by mixing each hue with at least 2 colors. During the winter months my palette tends to go dark. Unfortunately, I can’t see color spatially in artificial light; therefore I only paint in natural light. I look forward to seeing the raking light on my studio walls on Groundhog Day because I know the seasonal light is changing. I use big brushes! A few are custom made for me in Germany with artificial bristles that hold up to oil paint. I also have large watercolor brushes from Japan and China and I use knives and rags. I work on a table to control the paint which is very liquid.
JS: Why do you consider it so important to purge referents in abstract painting?
AB: For the past year my studio building has been undergoing extensive renovations and I have had a steady stream of visits from contractors, architects, and firemen. Everyone has an opinion on “what” I am painting. A Sicilian electrician got into a heated discussion with the German Project Manager over my paintings. And after I tried to explain to 6 firemen a little about abstraction one of them apologized and told me one of the paintings looked like a big ear. Needless to say, that painting no longer exists.
JS: A recurring characteristic of your work is the use of transparencies, brushstrokes moving through layers of paint, and light coming through darkness. What is the expressive significance of this?
AB: I designated all things mysterious and foreign on the dark side when I was a child. This may have come from my feelings related to my family being part European refugees and in some way connected to the holocaust. Jewish culture and history is not an overt subject in my work but it has made me more sensitive to violence and discrimination and made me more of an active citizen.
