Katherine Boucher Beug (b. 1947) Telemachus

Irregular squares of colour in variations of blue, yellow, brown and white, bleed and seep into one another. At one time, there appears to have been a distinct grid-like structure at work that has long since been effaced and painted over. The repetition of the composition subtly veers off-course, into strong contrasts of density and light, alternating between delicate washes and opaque layers. The image seems to have been built up gradually, through long periods of painting and over-painting, looking and waiting. 

 The title of the artwork invokes the name of the son of Odysseus and Penelope, and a Greek myth infused with tales of seafaring, female cunning and family bonds. The image bears a formal resemblance to both a ship’s flag - wind-swept and tattered through years of Odysseus’s ocean voyages - and a handmade patchwork blanket, recalling the shroud woven daily and undone nightly by Penelope in order to delay remarriage.  Telemachus, the son, and Telemachus, the artwork, are the product of both the maritime and domestic elements of Homer’s epic poem, and as with much of the Beug’s wider practice, presents a considered exploration of abstraction through the fabulous and the everyday.