Bursts of color from a skateboard: “Floating Worlds” at Rosemont College

Joyce Berger lives a color-filled life. She loves painting, and colors, and creating. The paintings in her exhibit Floating Worlds: Recent Paintings at Rosemont College’s Lawrence Gallery are from two of her recent series, her latest experiments with pigment.

The “Origin” series features her usual abstract art, this time exploring motion in space, particularly how to capture a moment or the freezing of action. One inspiration for that series was watching her grandson Jaden on his skateboard, flying over his homemade ramps. The “Floating Worlds” works are abstract, too, but some feature landscapes (floating between two solid color fields). She wanted those works to be more structured and simplified. Landscapes are a departure for Berger, of Boothwyn. She thinks her visits to Martha’s Vineyard for more than 25 years informed those works.

When paintings paint themselves

Her main inspiration for both series, though, was color. “I wanted to explore that,” she said. “The colors were speaking to me.”

Berger decides the canvas size, the colors used, and the initial composition ideas, but after that, she just goes with the flow. “That’s exciting when that happens. Most of the time, when you’re really into the painting, it dictates to you, when you get out of your own way,” she said. “Sometimes, paintings paint themselves. You’re just the conduit.”

She prefers to work with oils because of their transparency and their malleability. “What you put on, what you take away, what you leave on, it’s all important,” she said.

Berger’s been an artist all her life — she drew as a child and was encouraged by a nun in high school to take her gift seriously. She did and was accepted at 17 into Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts with a full scholarship. Her work has been exhibited around the country and hangs in private and public collections, too.

Creative thrills

She still takes her art seriously. Sometimes, obligations, schedules, and everyday life get in the way, but she always returns to her art as soon as she can. “When you’ve been given something special, you have a duty to honor it,” she said. “That’s what I did, and I know that’s who I am.”

When she disconnects from that, she’s unhappy and feels frustrated. “When you’re not pursuing who you are, that thing that excites your inner core, what you’re born to do,” she said, “well, it’s not good for me.”

What she’s painting almost doesn’t matter as long as she’s being artistic. “I love the process of discovery when combined with the creative process,” she said. “The creative process opens my life to a bigger world. It’s thrilling to me.”

And it’s something that will sustain her and return her to the blank canvas again and again. “I never will run out of themes or ideas,” she said. “I can’t paint fast enough.”

Floating Worlds: Recent Paintings runs through November 6 at Rosemont College’s Lawrence Gallery, 1400 Montgomery Avenue, Rosemont, PA. For more information, call 610-527-0200 or visit Rosemont online.

At right: Joyce Berger's Floating Worlds Series # Vlll. Image courtesy of the artist.