PORTALS - solo show: FONTLEROY SHIMMER - Video Installation still
ARTIST STATEMENT - October 2023
I am a US-based interdisciplinary artist most often recognized for my large-scale abstract water paintings in oils and video installations.
TimeSCAPES began in 2008, coinciding with my move back to the Pacific Northwest and the renewal of a connection nature. Through the camera lens, I see the movement of painting with light and time passages. Now, at each new location, I record a painting about to happen through sound and image.
The deeper the impression, the more I can translate what I experience through video editing then into the painting process. I create seamless video loops played non-stop either by themselves or in tandem with several others in the studio.
Inside the studio, these sounds, videos and paintings in all stages surround me. It is not one painting, one video or one sound bite, but a time-based installation that prompts me physically to translate through my body the fluidity of these onto the painted surfaces. I work best on a larger scale and when I can move from one work to another. This is performance with my body, surfaces and paint.
In October 2019, before the pandemic shutdown, I went to Tonga to be in the water with Humpback whales. As was clear to me when returning from Maui earlier that year, my experiences with the beauty of our planet changes me and becomes the propulsion for my painting.
BIO - October 2023
Betty Jo Costanzo’s award-winning art has been described as “getting lost with a purpose” and “what a place would be like if you belonged there.” Her influences are multi-faceted and span many art disciplines. The late and great Jay Defeo, her longtime mentor and friend, continues to be the most significant.
Her works are held in corporate, private and public collections worldwide, and her public exhibitions and residencies span four decades regionally and internationally. She’s lived in São Paulo, Brazil and on both coasts of the United States.
A former associate professor at California College of the Arts, she has also worked and taught around the world, including England, Ireland, Italy, Spain, and Cyprus. She now maintains a full-time studio practice based in Seattle, Washington.
Her latest LIVING OCEANS series is a call to action for all who love the beauty of our planet Earth.