You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can
change your direction overnight.– Jim Rohn
“A while ago I found myself in a ‘painting rut,’” says Layton artist Terrece Beesley. Instead of staying in that rut, the artist decided to get experimental with her usual style. “I usually paint large pieces, so this was a real challenge for me,” she says of the scores of 5” x 7” pieces she has experimented with to shake things up. Her current exhibit at Art at the Main, in Salt Lake City’s Library Square, features many of the works. New Directions is based on a set of goals Beesley made for herself, and she is working hard to stick to them. So far she has finished 70 of the small pieces — “I’ll persist until I reach 100” — all surrounding different styles and themes. In her artist statement she writes, “I took painting seminars, many seminars. They were inspiring, but left me a bit confused about what I wished to achieve in my paintings. How and what did I really want to paint?”
In these paintings she seems to explore that question. “I just feel, as an artist, sometimes we get too comfortable. Once we find ‘our style’ it is hard to break free and explore other ways to be creative.” Beesley experimented with different surfaces, studied paintings of artists she admired and emulated their techniques, experimented with different framing styles, and, most important of all, she opened herself to “risk feeling vulnerable and new and imperfect.”
“New Directions,” work by Terrece Beesley, Art at the Main, Shops at Library Square, Salt Lake City, through July 9th, www.artathemain.com.
Evan Waechtler is a senior in the English Creative writing program at Utah State University with a focus on poetry. He is currently working on a chapbook that explores mental illness with an emphasis on clinical depression, Hope Avenue.
Categories: Exhibition Reviews | Visual Arts
