Barbara Boekelman

Lives and works in Christchurch, New Zealand

Artist statement

Painting is my best friend. I tell her all my secrets and then we hide them together. My large-scale works grow through continual reworking. I draw, paint, obscure, wipe away, and paint over again. The layers build as one thought leads to another, an ongoing chain of doubt, discovery, and wonder. Fragments are revealed and buried; figures and objects surface then vanish, until the many layers make the painting appear more abstract than it really is. I don't aim for conclusions, preferring the space where things remain open, unsettled, and unresolved. Finding it almost impossible to paint without tension, my subjects usually emerge from what unsettles me: religion, greed, inequality, animal cruelty, and the contradictions of human behaviour. The unease shapes the choices I make; colour combinations that grate and glow at the same time, compositions that feel off-kilter yet somehow hold. I am drawn to that point where imperfection tips into its own kind of rightness. I settle on a title before I start the painting. I don’t want it to reveal too much. Like the work itself, the title is meant to raise questions rather than provide answers. They are not explanations, but guides. Guiding me while I paint, and later also guiding the viewer, suggesting a way of looking at the work while still leaving space for doubt and multiple readings. I push myself to transform uncomfortable themes into pieces one wants to look at and spend time with. It is not a solution, but a way of holding...

Artwork