In the Studio with Painter Deborah Forman - Inside Art with Michael Rose

In the Studio with Painter Deborah Forman - Inside Art with Michael Rose

 

If the practice of artist Deborah Forman was described in just a couple of words, it might come down to color and composition. Forman’s tightly choreographed abstractions are explorations of interactions between tones and forms. From her Pawtucket studio, she creates work that is potent and enjoyable to look at closely.

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Raised in Rhode Island, Forman earned her BFA from RISD before going on to obtain her MSAE from MassArt and an MFA from Parsons in New York. She has been exhibiting her work for over thirty years, and regularly shows her paintings at venues in New England and New York. A passionate educator, Forman taught at Wheaton College and RISD Continuing Education and has also authored two instructional books on painting and color. In addition to her active studio practice, she is also the Coordinator for Arts Engagement and Education at Brown RISD Hillel.

 

 

Forman primarily works in acrylics and gouaches. Using a palette knife, she deftly mixes paints and water. She often starts by staining and saturating heavyweight papers and then returns to her surfaces again and again to build up fascinating structure and tone.

 

Describing the process behind her paintings, Forman explains, “Color and value is very important in my work. I often work with a limited palette of about 5 colors maximum. Through these limitations, I try to find the music within the variation of those 'notes' of the selected pigments. There is a lot of correlation between musicality and color, and the emotional range that can be created through the endless structuring of chords, dissonance and harmony, rhythm, the pauses in between, and on and on.”

 

 

Forman continues, “I often make a series based on one of these palette structures, and no two are ever alike. Despite these limitations the possibilities are bountiful, and as a series there is a joy that I get from seeing these variations. I never know beforehand how this structure will take place, I intuitively let the process of mixing and applying the chroma guide me as I make each piece. Working with color for me is akin to safe cracking. I am listening and very present to what unfurls during the process, and each piece reveals itself to me, how it wants to be resolved. Not knowing is the fun of it.”

 

A skilled colorist, Forman has a keen sense for mixing, pairing, and contrasting tones. Her finely crafted paintings compel viewers to look deeply.

 

 

Forman, who previously worked at home, now has a studio in a converted mill at 545 Pawtucket Avenue. Speaking of her experience since taking on this new creative venue, Forman says, “I love the industrial vista that I have out of my window, it is a big beautiful sky, framed with century old brick chimneys. I particularly enjoy watching these two doves that are always perched atop it. So far, the birds are my community here, ha!  I have such a close connection to this patch of Pawtucket. As a child, I have many great memories of Korbs Bakery, S and H Green Stamps and the legendary underground Chips Bowlarama, all within a stone's throw of this mill space. So in many ways working here feels like home.The complex itself has a great presence. It is a beautifully maintained building, and there is a lot of great creative energy emanating from the building around the clock.”

 

In her bright studio, Forman is working on a series that takes a break from the types of color that have defined previous paintings. Using materials like graphite and achromatic paints, she has assembled new pieces that are variations of black, white, and gray. In these, her strong sense of mark making comes across clearly.

 

 

Speaking of the body of work, Forman describes it, “Recently I have been working on large drawings in graphite and acrylic, that have no color at all! I think it is a reaction to the disarray of world politics right now, that deeply affects me. I am drawn more to the physicality of making marks on paper and the starkness of black and white. There is an elemental beauty to achromatic work, and I am really enjoying the atmospheric silvery tones of it all. I don't feel deprived or limited by it- it just feels right for me in this current moment. Color will return.”

 

Forman’s latest paintings are sensitively constructed. In between planes of flat color and fields of calligraphic line, beautiful visual subtleties abound and beckon.

 

 

Asked what she hopes viewers take away from an experience with her paintings, Forman responds directly, saying, “I hope that when people look at my work, they are moved by the sense of light, movement and growth.”

 

Learn more about Deborah Forman’s work at www.deborahforman.com.