"Floating Frame" Abstract Purple and Grey Painting by Betty Marvin

This acrylic painting by Betty Marvin is part of her series titled “Floating Frame”, which includes works exhibited at the Los Angeles County Museum and in a solo exhibition at Richard Bennett Gallery in Los Angeles.
Taking the contours of a vertically positioned rectangle, the artist guides the viewer to a state of elevation. This arrangement generates an initial dialogue between form and space. Like the transistors of the last century that allowed us to change stations, this artwork offers us the possibility of transforming our frequency universe, providing a meditation on emptiness and infinity.

The brilliance radiating from what seems to be the heart of the work—a heart that invades the entire space, nearly monochromatic, ranging from white to pearl gray—brings a dreamlike and almost ectoplasmic dimension.

This emanation could be perceived as a mirror on infinity. The monochromatic character, combined with the eruption of bright colors - red, orange, pink, yellow - that outline the edges of the geometric form, manifests the essence of a quest that is reflected not only in the clear physicality of this painting but also in the human soul itself. It is in this subtle union of minimalist art and abstraction that the exhilarating complexity of deceptive simplicity resides.

The vertical rectangle, transcendent and luminous, invites us to experience the void and the full, the tangible and the intangible. Its half-identified outline suggests a possible reading as a dialectic of the obvious and the hidden. But would this graphic language be as eloquent without the dazzling frame that borders it? While the center calls to contemplation, the edges burst into view, agitating all the spectral sobriety. We could see in this work a relational door, a path guiding serenely towards the pursuit of meaning.

B I O - Courtesy from the personal website of the artist

Born in a small river town in Washington State, Betty Marvin’s life and work have taken her all over the world in several guises; from Hollywood locations with her husband Lee Marvin, the well-known actor, to raising four children as a single mother while going back to school to forge a new career; from working in the Parisian fashion scene to creating artwork based on her experience of sudden homelessness, including traveling the world alone for one year to document the homeless in other cultures.
Betty holds a BA in Music from UCLA, a BFA in Painting, and an MFA in Intermedia from the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, where she studied with Matsumi Kanemitsu and Keith Finch, among others.

She now lives in Santa Barbara, California, and spends time during the winter on the coast of Baja, Mexico, in the solar-powered "sand castles" she designed and built, pictured on the Creative Works page.

At eighty-one, when she is not busy designing environmental structures, making conceptual art, painting, and writing, Betty can be found cooking for friends and spending time with her grown children.

REFERENCE NUMBER: LU825838180832
PERIOD: 1990-1999
CONDITION: Excellent
MEASUREMENTS: Height: 30.25" Width: 25" Depth: 1"
COUNT: 1
MATERIAL: Acrylic
CREATOR: Betty Marvin
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: United States