Beth Kolar poses here with a commissioned piece she completed for a client, SITTING LADY, a 3-ft by 4-ft acrylic on stretched canvas with palette knife. Scroll down for more artwork...
Artist: Beth Kolar
Town: Plano, IL
Medium: Acrylic or Gouache
Favorite Subjects: Flowers
Inspiration: “It’s almost always curiosity. I ask myself: Can I paint that? And then I try.”
What’s most surprising about Beth is that she’s only been painting for two years. Growing up she watched her talented mother easily paint in mixed media or watercolor. However, as a youngster, Beth did not consider herself artistic.
One day while embracing a meditative state and clearing her mind, she saw a vision of herself spreading cadmium yellow across a canvas with a palette knife. The passing thought said, “By the way, you have this inside of you.”
Immediately after that experience, she went out and bought the art supplies she needed and started exploring color, shape, and relationships. She developed her own curriculum feeling 100% confident about the path she was embarking upon.
“I’m really a very practical person, so this journey of just following my gut was a whole new experience for me,” Beth recalls. “I decided to stop believing what other people thought about me and stay true to myself, embracing the moment, being present.”
She went on to set up a studio in her dining room while accumulating better products and work surfaces along with more storage for supplies.
Along the way, she discovered that embracing the imperfection of her work in her attempts to convey the subject matter, resulted in becoming her own unique style.
“It’s helpful to me to realize there aren’t any rules,” she adds. “I can do whatever I want – mixing styles and techniques as I choose.”
For example, with her “pixelated” art, she paints from the bottom up and left to right.
"I often feel like an art scientist looking at something I want to paint as a problem to be solved – developing a hypothesis and a process before I even begin,” she explains. “I’m methodically thinking through techniques before trying them out.”
Her future goals are to create larger paintings, develop better muscle memory when it comes to working with a palette knife, and accept more commissions.
Check out bethkolar.com for more information.
Scroll down for more artwork....
BARN; 8.5" X 11"; Acrylic on mixed paper, "pixelated"; $90
GREEN PITCHER; 12" x 12"; acrylic on canvas board, palette knife; $100
ROSIE THE FLOWER TRUCK; 11" x 14" acrylic on stretched canvas, palette and pixelated
PEACOCK in gold frame; 36" x 45.5"; Acrylic thick paint/palette knife work on panel board; refurbished antique frame; $800”
PANSIES ON PINK; 16" x 20" acrylic on stretched canvas, palette knife; $90
