Rebecca Kovick • Experiments in Magic, Movement, and Color

You can't go back and change the beginning,  but you can start where you are and change the ending. - C.S.  Lewis

For visual artist Rebecca Kovick the primary goal of her magical, colorful, and experimental acrylic paintings is to create a sense of possibility for people. The Saginaw-based artist currently has her work on display at The Red Eye Coffee House in Old Town Saginaw; and the divergent range of her expressive canvases decorating the walls will be on display through the end of July.

A graduate of SVSU with a B.A. in psychology, Rebecca also attended graduate school at Spring Arbor University studying art therapy and has actively practiced art therapy in the Saginaw Public Schools in the past.  Currently raising a 3-year old and 6-year old while caring for her mother with Alzheimer’s, Rebecca has managed to find a fresh voice for conveying her passionate perspectives through her paintings.

“The purpose of each canvas presented is one of elevation,” she explains.  “Using a mix of acrylics, pouring mediums, and varied techniques, my pieces are a visual commentary about the transcendence of our personal limiting beliefs. Our perceptions are both the poison and antidote to the human spirit; so I view my artwork as the antidote.”

“There works are my painted expressions of the miracles that can flash in the mind,” she continues, “that  radically show a form all our own of healing, insight, and new perspective.   Every flow of color represents internal possibility, brightly unfolding before each viewer. Within each pigment, cell combination, and design study, a synchronicity exists between artist and observer.”

“I am heavily influenced as much by the work of Degas and especially Marc Chagall because of the color variation and vibrancy to his pieces,  as I am by my background in art therapy,’ states Rebecca.  “My focused commitment is to the process of recovery. This is a dedication to how life often uses our deepest pain as the launching pad for our greatest calling.”

Philosopher Alan Watts once wrote that because people are so self-contained and absorbed, they more often than not look at the world outside of themselves as something to be conquered or subjugated into their own reference point, rather than realizing they share and occupy space equally with the oftentimes greater forces of nature.

It is this transformational magic of perception that Rebecca is focusing her vision upon. “My work is about looking at possibilities from whatever you see and looking at it from more of an outward as opposed to inward perspective,” she explains. “It’s about letting go of what a person has gone through and more about using my paintings as a platform for bringing out what is possible in the person viewing it. My goal is to have my work open the viewer and elevate perspectives about themselves.”

Although she has only been practicing and. Developing her artwork for about a year now, while seriously pursuing it over the past nine months, Rebecca says she began by studying the craft of ‘dirty pours’. “This is an easy method of basically pouring paint upon a canvas, only I’ve expanded upon that method. I practiced on poster board and took it further over the past 8 months, focusing more upon using this medium to create a message within myself and for other people.”

“It’s a hard process to control,” she continues, “because of the nature of acrylic paints. It’s wet-on-wet and you have to use various techniques to variate what you want to achieve. It’s almost like developing a good photograph in the sense that the magic happens in the moment of development, depending upon the factors and processes used to create and develop the image.”

“I use different mediums with the acrylics, such as glue, or a paint softener, or silicone to control the various pours,” she notes. “Sometimes they don’t dry exactly the way you want, so you have to tweak the work. Much depends upon how you treat the painting while it’s drying, such as the atmosphere its placed in. This is basically curing the painting and to have it cure properly you have to wait a long time before you put a varnish on it.”

Rebecca says much of his work has been trial-and-error, but she never gets discouraged if she needs to start over on a piece. “You have to be very careful of the color wheel when mixing acrylics and mediums, because if you use something against it the color will turn to mud, which I’ve done plenty of times.”

“But mainly the message from my paintings is to when people look at them I want something to explode inside of them. I want them to catch their breath - sort of like when they’re watching a firework explode in the sky.”

“Half of the secret behind good art is to have the confidence,” concludes Rebecca. “I believe in showing people what I’m about, but when they look at my work I want to show them more about what they’re about through examining and enjoying my paintings.”

When asked about the biggest challenge involved with working and developing her artwork, Rebecca says the “most challenging component is also the best thing about it, too.  I don’t do this alone but belong to a group of similar artists from Australia and all over the world. We network and discuss different pouring techniques and work together learning to mix and share our work and critique it, which helps immensely in shaping my work.”

“The process of viewing my work is my visual message of the unique vitality and possibility that is open to anyone.  The art of personal interpretation is meant to counter the numbness we experience in everyday life.”

To contact Rebecca or purchase her work you can reach her through her facebook page.