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1966
(AUSTRALIA)
AUSTRALIAN
Emily Berger is an American abstract painter based in Brooklyn, New York. Her paintings are minimal and gestural, revealing in process and celebrating the hand of the artist. Berger is a member of American Abstract Artists.
After graduating from Brown University, Berger earned her MFA in Painting from Columbia University, and attended the Skowhegan School in Maine. She has lectured extensively and participated in numerous artist residencies, including the Norte Maar Adirondacks outpost.
Berger works with oil paint on wood panels. She layers paint in gestural, horizontal swaths from left to right, stacking the horizontal bands from top to bottom of the surface. An interplay of complementary colors creates a sense of push pull, endowing her compositions with nuanced luminosity. Scraping and scumbling the layers of paint, Berger gives her paintings a textured, painterly, material presence.
She describes her method as being in the tradition of Abstract Expressionism—as if an event is taking place in the arena of the painting. Her approach, however, is quite controlled. Despite its structural reliance on the grid, the interplay between planning and the emergence of accidents lends the work a feeling of energy and mystery.
Berger is inspired by the conversation that emerges as she works between the known and unknown. She approaches her paintings like a form of writing, applying rhythmic, deliberate marks from left to right. The gestural bands are layered in a grid, but they also sag and drop, evidence of the imperfect hand, and a nod to the force of gravity. Improvisation is key to what Berger achieves. Like a musician choosing to play in a certain key or at a certain rhythm, she selects the colours and structure of the work, but with each new painted and scraped layer, new omissions and revelations emerge. Her intuitive response to these changes guides the evolution of the work. What remains is a picture of variations and rhythms revealed.
In an interview with Sharon Butler on Two Coats of Paint, Berger stated, “I am not looking for an effect. I’m hoping something happens that’s satisfying and generative for me and the audience as a result of the process of painting. I often feel like I am working something out, solving some problem, but it’s romantic; this idea that you can work consciously and unconsciously at once and find the right place to stop eventually. It’s a mystery.”
Berger has exhibited internationally in numerous galleries and museums.
Her work is included in numerous private and public collections, including Metropolitan Museum of Art, Department of Drawings and Prints, New York; Museum of Modern Art, Library Special Collection, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art Library; Phillips Collection, Washington, DC; Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio; and the Delaware Art Museum, among others.
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