Franny Golden

As a painter, I am committed to process as a necessary part of personal individualization and as a necessary part of the completed painting. So my paintings reveal that process: lines, drawings, failed efforts remain--emerging through the layers. They are variations: or still lives, interiors, and portraits-- increasingly more abstract. They are visual journals--the gates or completion being their times and moments in my life: I can look as every painting I ever made and tell you all about life at the time it was painted, and in particular, some pretty astonishing, emotive indelible stories from the recent three-and a half years of having lived and painted and taught in Turkey.

Turkey has obviously influenced my painting and, to an extent, facilitated a more abstract direction. I am a walker, a public transportation maven. So it was difficult to miss much--sounds of soprano voices smells of grilled food, untold textures, saturated colors, and flowing patterns. And gold, lots of it.

In addition to the process: there is the repetition of form, color and gold paint. Almost certainly some forms are archetypal-probably-personal statements about being a woman, (Although i8t is difficult to articulate such a statement. , it is something I feel.) The hues, the forms, the gold are, as well, manifestations of Turkey: the sphere, the dome, the arch are clearly architectural- ubiquitous here. The sphere has also come to symbolize the abundance of profuse, voluptuous fruit, as well as the hot, relentless sun.

Academically-intellectually--I want to take these forms and use them as color. And take these colors and use them as form. It is critical to work both of these elements as the same level, on the same picture plane, to work both elements as intervals, as in music- or even in mathematics. Hopefully, then, the harmony, the motion- and the necessary tension-will work indivisibly toward an expressionistic composition.

Franny Golden