Apollonova Art News

Paintings and artwork by Beth Ciborek.

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When I paint I don’t think. I allow my brush to follow the path that feels most natural. I never force anything. I never start with a plan. My paintings are organic and tend to grow in a very cellular way. Inspired and influenced by nature, Abstract Expressionism and the Surrealists ideas of Automatism, I use art as a means of connecting with the most basic elements of all that is natural both in and around me. Artists such as Andy Goldsworthy, Friedrich Hundertwasser, as well as the art of the North West Coast American Indians have played a significant role in the development of my artistic ideas and goals. Intrigued by the curvilinear natural world, finding beauty in the branches of a tree or the veins in a leaf, I am drawn to nature. I consider my art to be an attempt at both growing closer to and bringing together the most basic elements of my own existence and the natural world.

Often my art tends to be stark, minimal, transparent. Recently though I have been adding layers and playing a bit more with depth. My recent paintings have a denser and more opaque feel than my older work. The patterns and lines I use have been and will continue to be organic, cellular, circular, concentric, spiraling… as Hundertwasser states: “The straight line is something cowardly drawn with a rule, without thought or feeling; it is a line which does not exist in nature.” The straight line is man-made. It does not exist in nature and rarely will you find a straight line in my work. Instead, the circles encircle me. Life is made up of loops. Each moment, each day, each month, each year we are alive we are adding loops. Beats of music, thoughts in my head, the blood flowing through my veins, the rising and setting of the sun….

“Everything an Indian does is in a circle and that is because the power of the world always works in circles and everything tries to be round.” - Black Elk
“Nature is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere.” - Pascal
“What is eternal is circular, and what is circular is eternal.” - Aristotle