HELEN BEEKMAN

Artist’s Statement 

 

 

 

Being an artist is my way of making the intangible world tangible.

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The Process 

 

Artistically, I consider myself a sculptor. 

 

After making sculptures in bronze and other traditional materials, I began working with different mediums on flat surfaces to create, what I call two-dimensional sculptures. I became intrigued while experimenting with dry organic hay and realized how it shimmered and came to life when color was applied and the hay was manipulated onto a surface. 

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Whether the piece has a recognizable form or is an abstraction, the hay gives it a beguiling quality.  If pressed under glass, like layers of leaves in a pond, the saturated colored hay becomes a reflecting pool of memories. Touching outer space, holding fireworks in my hands, capturing the flight of starlings, or hearing the sound of a voice or music becomes a tangible possibility. 

 

My current works are done in Hay, Clay, Ink, Graphite, Charcoal and Paint.

 

 

The Finish

 

Being an artist is a wonderful thing. Creating each work usually begins with an idea but then somewhere along the way the piece jauntily takes on its own life or disguise.  The end result can be as surprising as a kiss, a raining flurry of shooting stars in the night sky or a sonata coming from a songbird.

 

What it means to be a human against a backdrop of time and space and where we are going and where we have come from fascinates me. 

 

Imagination is what makes us human and without the arts our human voice is lost.

                                               

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                                                                                            HHB

                                                                                            New York City, March 20, 2019

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