Emma Godebska
1976
(FRANCE)
FRENCH
Emma Godebska is a French abstract artist who currently resides and works in Nimes, France.
Her artistic concentration; trace and memory, has more recently become a transitive, radical capture of movement.
Education
Educated in London, she studied Applied Arts and Jewelry Design at Sir John Cass School of Art, Godebska’s early exposure to her father’s painting and sculpture materials fostered a fascination with texture, imprint, transparency, and color.
Technique
Godebska’s use of natural pigments, reflective of nature itself, is in dialogue with diluted acrylic paint and performative expressions of unchoreographed, ritualistic movements. She describes her process as a visual Tai Chi in search of inner peace. Color-making is meditative and methodical. Spending hours mixing the proper color corresponds to a feeling or emotion. Joan Mitchell also spoke of painting feelings and told Yves Michaud in 1986, “Painting is a means of feeling ‘living.”...
Designing a silicone tool that achieves the right balance of transparency and opacity, is also part of her customized, individualistic process. A philosophy of balance between contrasting elements echoes Taoist teachings. These elements are transparency vs opacity, light versus dark, warm versus cool, conscious analytical decisions and unconscious spontaneous gestures.
Her blue lagoon period lasted a year. Now the mood is soft and warm: yellows and earth tones with experimentation leading to a larger installation and bolder color marks, requiring more energy from the body and performance of spirit. The installation at Théâtre Périscope, in Nîmes, France, represents an earlier version of this method.
Inspiration
Godebska captures the essence of memories.
Joan Mitchell explained in an interview with Dorothy Seckler, in 1965, “If I have some sort of a feeling, it might even be some sort of feeling that I’m green or a remembered landscape or something like that. The feeling I had looking at a bridge or a river or whatever it would be”. Mitchell’s property, La Tour in Vétheuil, France, shared the same landscape that inspired Monet....
In contrast, Godeska channels a Ninth Street, Neo-Abstract Expressionist vibe, just more Zen.
Her expressive marks have the emotional charge of a Mitchell, with the like-minded minimal energy of the contemporary artist, Yeo Shih Yun’s ink paintings.
Exhibitions
Emma Godesbka has exhibited widely in France and the United Kingdom.
Galleries
Decorazon Gallery, New York, Dallas, USA
The French Art Studio, London, UK
Galerie Virginie Lesage, Paris, online
Le Reservoir Gallery , Sète-Montpellier-Paris, France
