Béatrice Dauge Kaufmann

“Her palette – and my reaction to it – struck me: I almost wanted to eat it. I felt like a kid staring at a cartoon of creamy colors at an ice cream stand, trying to decide which delicious ones to taste.”

 - Linda K. Pilgrim, ArtScope, 2009.

 

Inside You IV,  oil on canvas, 12 x 12

Beatrice Dauge Kaufmann, originally from Switzerland, paints works inspired by Northeastern seascapes with optimism, withholding the usual grey hues of skies and seas to make way for brilliant blues, deep shades of periwinkle, pastel oranges, and touches of white. Over and over again, Dauge comments that her color choices are simply what she sees. In the video ‘Bleu', which accompanied her 2007 Red Room exhibition by the same title at the Copley Society of Art, Dauge describes her color choices in capturing the Cape Cod region, Maine, and Boston landscapes. She states that, "I go to a place and capture the lights and the emotions that touch my soul," and she then uses those emotions as the driving forces for her color choices.

Dauge excels in the abstract format. The lack of formal structure allows her free experimentation with colors, forms, and textures. Dauge lets her feelings lead, challenging herself to push the colors until she lands on something striking. And then, as with a poem, a piece of music, or any form of art, Dauge takes a step back to evaluate, to see how the colors and forms interact to create the entire piece. One stipulation for her is that the eye must continually travel around the piece and should not get bored. Dauge experiments with texture and layering shapes to create spacial depth in her works. Each piece is left without a frame, for it is important for her that her pieces can “breathe and interact with the space around them."


Dauge feels intently that art is and will always be a part of life. She creates to express her feelings and to remain in contact with the emotions, both negative and positive, that color our world. In the end, what brings her meaning is “touching the soul and the imagination of those who see my work, making them think, dream or share in an emotion.”

Visit her website at http://www.beatricedauge.com/