This exhibit runs concurrently with a show of Karen Becker’s work at the West Village Meeting House, in West Brattleboro, titled Bearing Witness, Part 1.
Artist’s Statement
The majority of this exhibition is devoted to my love of nature, which is being severely threatened by the climate crisis. The animals and trees represented here are all bearing witness to the devastation that is unfolding due to industrialization and war.
This exhibit is dedicated to my parents, Marianne and George Becker, for their lifelong courage, generosity, kindness, and devotion to the arts in Southern Vermont. My parents instilled in me a deep appreciation of nature and beauty, and the courage to express my inner world. They fully and lovingly supported my art.
In 1938, my parents were on their honeymoon when my father was arrested. The charge: being Jewish. My father was jailed in various prisons for weeks, until a friend suggested that my mother beg for her husband’s freedom by telling the Austrian prison warden that they were on their honeymoon. They enjoyed another sixty-four years together.
On exhibit are artworks I made during the past 40 years. I enjoy painting local scenes, often of Stickney Brook, Sunset Lake, and my favorite maple which inspired paintings for 35 years, using many different media, including watercolors, pastels and gouache. For ten years, in all seasons, I created pastels of the field and stand of sugar maple outside my friend’s kitchen window. My subjects are the local roads, fields, trees in Westminster West, Putney and all around this corner of Vermont. On display are my drawings of animals and birds which combine mono-prints and charcoal drawings, self-portraits drawn with a great variety of different expressions which were mostly created using India ink and a sharpened twig. In addition there are fantasies, including ‘The Sphere Series,’ gems from my imagination, unusual flying creatures. Many of these paintings and drawings have been in my private collection, so this is their debut in the world.
