Artillery Magazine

REVIEW

Edith Beaucage

By John David O’Brien

September 8, 2015

Edith Beaucage "Rave Prose" 2015

Edith Beaucage, Rave Prose, 2015, oil on canvas, 135-1/2″ x 115″

An exploration of storytelling through the riotous use of color is at the core of this new body of work by Edith Beaucage. The figures dance about in light delineation embedded in a swirl of audacious swathes of color field painting. “Chill Bivouac Rhymes” is also the lively storyboard for the scenes from an operatic love story. She, Ekaterina, is the exotic young Bolshoi ballerina who, in the course of this tale, jilts her Russian lover after finding an entirely new and irresistible illumination while at a forest rave, and then runs off with her surfer guy until they both disappear into an explosion of light. To accomplish all this, the gallery is turned into a stage set replete with 12-foot prop-like trees, a sketched reclining couple both resembling a skeletal version of Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’herbe, a billboard and numerous artworks. Ranging from very large canvases like the towering Rave Prose (all works 2015) to very small baked enamel on metal plates like Bohemian Lord Coming Out of the Wood, Beaucage develops her characters and lays out her plot in broad strokes.

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