Francene Levinson Artist Statement

The work in my portfolio is new media abstract digital painting based mostly on minimalism and somewhat on aesthetic formalism.  Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or concepts. According to Tate, "Formalism describes the critical position that the most important aspect of a work of art is its form – the way it is made and its purely visual aspects – rather than its narrative content or its relationship to the visible world. In painting therefore, a formalist critic would focus exclusively on the qualities of color, brushwork, form, line and composition." The art works on this site are created by manipulating pixels within magnetic algorithms. Pixels themselves are pushed, pulled and stretched. My art seeks to reveal the essence of forms, lines, space, and forces within well balanced dynamic compositions. This body of work has been influenced by artists such as my former professor of art at Brooklyn College, City University, New York: Ad Reinhardt, and artists Georgia O’Keefe and Mark Rothko.

I use dynamic lines and value shaded forms in my abstraction of natural forms.  When I use manipulated algorithmic programs to push, pull and stretch individual pixels into compositions that demonstrate dynamic forces my creative sensibilities are satisfied . Color is used to enhance the mood of a composition. Each work is an edition of one printed on High Definition Aluminum Substrate to intensify the color effect and clarity of line. It is ready to hang, frame-less, and weather resistant.

The Pacific Northwest environment is full of forms, colors and environmental forces that are my primary source of inspiration. I hope the viewer enjoys the elegant forms that abound in this coastal world which inspire me. I choose to render my concepts in a manipulated digital format because I believe the essence of line and form are enhanced by this new medium as no other can.