HARRIET KORMAN

I love the form of painting – a flat surface that can refer to anything, and be changed and manipulated in so many ways. About 35 years ago I had an interesting experience where I took some black ink drawings of mine that I liked and tried to translate them into paintings with color. It was intriguing to decide what colors the lines and shapes should be. I’ve returned to this idea/process a number of times over the years.

In this current series, I drew to find a form I wanted to work with. These drawings are not studies, I consider drawing to be an equal practice to painting and value them as such. While drawing, I chose a very simple familiar form of concentric rectangles because it seemed like it would be a challenge, and interesting to see what I could do with it. I took that form into painting without referring to the drawings, and later used the drawings as sources for the paintings.

I try to capture the dynamic in the drawings; the color relationships, the proportions, the movement – what attracts me in the drawing, not copy it. This interpolation of the drawing has many obstacles, pitfalls, inconsistencies and idiosyncrasies, but ultimately is very engaging. The process of painting contains many of these journeys, circuitous routes, procedures, and properties of materials that are revelatory to me, and I hope will engage the viewer.

Harriet Korman, November 2021