Artist's Statement
The love of painting has taken Elke Behrens to many corners of the
world: Switzerland, Turkey, Singapore, Italy, Germany, Bali and
a city she visits as often as she can, New York. When she travels
to these places she marvels at the centuries of creative expression.
She has seen underground dwellings in Turkey, ancient artifacts
in Germany and the great works of such giants as Massaccio and Michaelangelo
in Florence and Rome. Her work is continuously influenced by artistic
history she has seen.
Behrens was born in Hamburg, Germany. In 1954 her family moved to
Connecticut and eventually to the San Francisco Bay Area where she
now lives. She has a hungry need to be creative because she finds
that it brings order to her life in a world of personal loss and
chaos. Motherhood was tinged with tragedy and widowhood soon followed.
Since then she has worked prolifically, rarely spending a day without
painting. She has the motivation, a strong desire and the discipline
to create and put luscious oil paint on her canvases. Behrens works
dilligently and with great fervor almost every day---she says "my
day is not complete unless I smear some oil onto the canvas". Some
might call it an obsession.
The works are strong and often have an affinity to those of Jean
Basquiat-not necessarily a conscious mimicking, but a related and
compatible art brut sensibility. By using inspiration in the art
of children (as Klee, Picasso and Dubuffet did), creating over-painted
surfaces with scratched and graffitied expressions she creates a
synthesis of artistic sensibility. Other artists served as models
and inspiration for her art as well-primarily Milton Avery and Gustav
Klimt . Behrens's paintings have been picked up by art collectors
in various cities within the United States and abroard. (Sultan
Hassanal of Borneo has three of her works.)
ARTISTS ARE NEAREST GOD. INTO THEIR SOULS HE BREATHES HIS
LIFE, AND FROM THEIR HANDS IT COMES IN FAIR, ARTICULATE FORMS TO
BLESS THE WORLD. J.g.h.
Education
San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA 1995
California College of Arts and Craft, Oakland, CA 1985-1989
Cecil Graves Studio, Florence,
Italy, 1987
Teacher/Mentor, Applied Studio, JFK University, Orinda, CA 1994
|
