Member Artist
February 2023

Beth Cartland


                                                                                                                                   Artist Statement
 
                                                                                         Contemporary Painter & Collage Artist
I am a painter of energy and power. My work is unique and reaches out to the viewer. Each painting is a dialogue between the canvas and me. Each work has its own demands thru color, shape, texture, and layers. I love the physical process of applying paint to canvas. The application of color and line to the surface of the art gives me a sense of energy that connects the external world with my private interior space. I work the surface of each painting and add layers of paint and collage material. Often, I will use material from nature or prints that I have made on rice paper. I use a variety of materials and add and subtract as the painting dictates. For me, abstract art, like life, is always accessible and inaccessible at the same time. Both tangible and mysterious, abstract art contains the elements of surprise and spirituality. Beth Cartland
Picture


​​​To paint in an abstract style gives the artist a sense of freedom of expression, but it is a challenge to communicate feelings using only line, paint, color and texture.  Many people are more comfortable with objective reality and to stir a response, either negative or positive, is to defy their calm and have them re-examine their perceptions.  “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see” H.D. Thoreau. 
I was born in Kansas City, Mo, a city with a delightful mid-western reality.  My uncle, artist John Steuart Curry, was a well-known and successful painter of Middle America.  I was surrounded by his art and absorbed the idea that all paintings should have a certain look.  It was wonderful but it didn’t excite me.  It wasn’t until I started my own art journey that I discovered abstraction. 
My husband was a career Army Officer and we lived in many areas of the United States and also in Germany for three years.  I have studied art and painted and exhibited extensively. 
I have exhibited in China, Venezuela, and with the Arts in Embassies Program of the U. S. Department of State.  I received a Masters of Fine Arts degree from The American University in Washington, DC.  I also studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and the Corcoran College of Art and Design.  My home is in Washington, DC, where I live with my family and have my studio.





​For inquiries contact the artist directly:
www.BethCartland.com 
[email protected] 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bethcartland/