Paint is a living substance---not what   you cover a canvas with.                 -- Nathan Oliveira

 

I extend Oliveira’s use of “paint” to all media placed on a surface during the spirit of art making. Manipulating media, “a living substance,” on a surface is an active experience between the hand and the mind, the body and the medium.  In my current work, the manipulation of this living substance includes an ongoing series depicting key women in my life. In “Communion” the painting process is deliberate and spans several months of layering oil on top of oil to achieve forms, texture, color, light and shadow. The woman is my mother. She wakes in the morning and wraps her thin body in a wool turquoise throw and sips her “half” cup of coffee from a floral drug store cup. It is a quiet moment for us both. She stills knows me, and I am anxious to document her with video, drawings and paintings before her mind, her esprit, slips into the last stages of Alzheimer’s disease.

--Brenda Berg