'Sunday's Child'
Kirsten Beets at Salon 91This exhibition is a celebration of memory, nature and love for fellow humans and animals. One of the subjects Sunday’s Child has explored in particular is the memory of having observed people at rest or interacting with nature - mostly small as if viewed from afar, allowing for the distance of time and anonymity for both the viewed and the viewer. Time becomes simply another distance through which we view our memories from afar, with all the haze that that distance implies. Most of these works are in a landscape format, invoking a sense that the represented scene (and the artist's memory of it) are simply a part of a larger whole. Despite this nature tends to be outnumbered, perhaps overwhelmed by humans in Kirsten's paintings.
With her latest body of work, Beets has attempted to capture the feeling of a late (Sunday) afternoon which represents the most compelling and also heart-breaking time of day for the artist, particularly on Sundays when the new week is about to start again and the old one is a mere memory. While reflecting on a day well spent, there is always that moment of having to give in to the knowledge that the day has gone forever. Kirsten expresses these feelings through paintings that are at once atmospheric, sensitive and detailed in their rendering, as well as highly imaginative in terms of their subject and composition.
The artist works predominantly with oil paint on paper, focusing on small and delicate details. There is a tension which exists between between her style and choice of subject matter, particularly in the intense effort and concentration required to paint something ordinary, something that may seem trivial to others, in such delicate detail. The everydayness of paper combined with the history of oils gives weight and value to her subjects. Kirsten's exquisite paintings may be interpreted as fragments of memory captured in a tangible form.
05 November - 01 December
