Artist Statement

From the moment we are born we are conditioned by experience to define our ambient space in terms of foreground, middleground and background space. We are thus enabled, through this spatial differentiation, to effectively manipulate the world around us.

My personal quest as an artist has, in part, involved a redefining of this three dimensional spatial differentiation into a two dimensional visual continuum. While progressing from foreground figure to background details during the execution of a drawing, I do not experience the aesthetic, physical, cognitive, or emotional transitional break associated with three dimensional space. The transition is instead a seamless flow, one pattern merging into another: the pattern of human hair merging into the smooth velvet of facial skin or the intricate patterns of a dress merging into the symmetry of garden flowers.

The intense personal satisfaction arising from the exploration of such patterns, and the efficacy with which the graphite media enables me to engage in this exploration makes every potential subject matter equally rich in visual content. The needle sharp point of a pencil applied to the texture free surface of smooth paper enables me to achieve a high level of direct intimacy with the depicted patterns and the observed details of the visual world.

Oscar Beck