Fred Voigt Becker

Oil, Wax and Graphite on Canvas, 56 47 inches, 2025

Continuing the theme of loopy, hand cut lines this painting employs a softer grey scale color palette. Many layers of painting, scraping and printing create complex subtleties.

Oil, Wax and Graphite on Canvas, 56 47 inches, 2025

Continuing the theme of loopy, hand cut lines this painting employs a softer grey scale color palette. Many layers of painting, scraping and printing create complex subtleties.

Oil, Graphite on Canvas, 47 × 56 inches, 2025

Another painting on the theme of loopy lines and the shapes they create.

Oil on Canvas, 120 x 78.75 inches, 2023

Repeating patterns learned from photographing crushed Ram trucks inform this color field. The color palette is psychedelic and does not reference the source material. Where does this Dust come from? The repetitions of pattern are cellular: from where does this dance arise?

Oil on Stretched Canvas, 115 x 79 inches, 2024

This painting continues the play on lines and the shapes they suggest that started with the crushed Ram truck images. These shapes are more organic and gestural. They were hand drawn and the screens that I used to print them were created by hand, leaving the gestural quality intact. The open, loopy design defied the greater complexity that my mind typically gravitates toward, leaving this painting lighter, fresher and joyful.

Oil on Canvas, 76 x 52, 2024

This color field incorporates several devices I use to organize space on a flat plane. The text buried as an early layer gives grid-like structure to the painting. The web of lines forms a screen that both defines and hides the shapes that are created by them. I used a soft palette, keeping the values close together, infusing the painting with light and allowing no single focal point.

Oil on Canvas, 56 × 46 inches, 2024

Continuing with the loopy shapes as a schema for organizing the space on a plane. This field contains many subtleties as I enjoyed playing with the colors of the lines through many layers of both screen printing and painting. The edges of this canvas are painted corresponding yellow greens with a textured surface made by rolling the paints over screens in several layers. The effect makes the whole appear as a cross section of a slab with the surface the cellular material.

Oil on Canvas, 56 × 46 inches, 2024

Continuing with the loopy shapes as a schema for organizing the space on a plane. This field contains many subtleties as I enjoyed playing with the colors of the lines through many layers of both screen printing and painting. The edges of this canvas are painted corresponding yellow greens with a textured surface made by rolling the paints over screens in several layers. The effect makes the whole appear as a cross section of a slab with the surface the cellular material.

Oil on Panel, 47 x 35 inches, 2024

This dense, complicated field is composed of screen-printed patterns derived from an Occidental rug and overlaid with hand stenciled images reminiscent of doodling in class. The entire montage is a nod to drawing and mark making.

Oil, Wax and Graphite on Cradled Panel, 47 × 35 inches, 2025

A painting within a painting, this intense field offers layers of painted surfaces over screen printed imagery. The petroglyph or amoeba-like figures in the center panel are made with a hand cut mylar stencil. All this process must eventually yield to the hand, heart, eye and mind as the piece is lovingly worked into and over, layer upon layer.

Oil, Cold Wax and China Marker on Birch Panel, 70 x 45 inches, 2023

Continuing the series of Occidental Rug patterns and intentionally overexposed color values this painting hits it out of the park. The floral patterning and vibrant color palette create a field that rolls back and forth but offers no place to rest.

Oil on Panel, 70 x 45 Inches, 2022

I photographed crushed and stacked Ram pickups at the junkyard behind Prism Workspaces. I liked the patterns they made, they were very sculptural. I created a series of images and printed a grid of twelve squares. I continued painting and printing into the resulting patterns using oil and wax.

Oil on Panel, 70 x 45 Inches, 2022

I photographed the crushed and stacked Ram pickups in the scrapyard behind Prism Workspaces. I liked the patterns they made. After I photoshopped the image, I had the jpegs turned into screens and I printed a grid of twelve squares. I painted into the resulting patterns using oil and wax. Triratna is a first century word / symbol for the “Triple Jewels.”

Oil, Acrylic, Graphite on Canvas, 56 x 42 inches, 2024

Painted over an older painting that was never shown, the resulting dense field updates the concept.

Oil on Nine Panels, 15 x 15 inches each, 45 x 45 inches overall, 2023

These nine panels are completely interchangeable and evoke the playfulness of a child’s set of blocks. Who wouldn’t want to drive their toy cars on the twisting roads or search for treasure among the shipwrecks? The panels each have soft surface textures and line work etched into the paint surfaces. Just for fun!! Completely interchangeable!

75 x 45 inches, Oil on Canvas, 2023

Like the preacher said, “You got to tell them, then tell them again, and then tell them what you told them.” This is a color field painting. The grid of words forms a structure to paint into, that’s all. This version was repainted over the 2022 version. More iterations may continue until it is sold or destroyed.

75 x 45 inches, Oil on Canvas, 2022

The title to this one is obvious, don’t you think? This companion piece to Color Field states the intent of the artist. The eye travels around the canvas but has no place to land.

Oil on Canvas, 72 x 72 inches, 2022

Big! Glorious! Exuberant! Stripes! Stripes have been done for over seventy years, from Morris Lewis to Bridget Riley and many other famous artists. Still, it was just SO MUCH FUN! And, of course, there is another, earlier painting underneath that’t bursting forth from the thin, transparent layers full of graphite and scraping. A close look at this painting reveals an amazing intricacy of details.

Acrylic on Canvas, 72 X 72 inches, 2010

I used a red acrylic mask over letter stencils on top of a painting originally done in my college days. The text provides a structural framework through which the older work emerges transforming the abstract expressionist painting into a color field. The quirky text, adapted from an ancient sutra, reads in part, “The mind you desire to possess cannot be seen or touched. That which can be held is not conscious. You, voracious for feces, forget another sack of muck!”

Oil, Acrylic on Canvas, four panels each 80 x 35 inches, 1978-2018

I built the frames on a rooftop in San Francisco in 1978. They traveled back to Virginia in an Econoline van and were stretched and painted for the first time in acrylic. They were painted over in Omaha in 1988. They spent a number of years in Vickie’s basement (thank you.) I was able to bring them to Denver in 2017 and after a good cleaning and some repair, finished repainting them in oil in 2018.

Acrylic on Canvas, 56 x 42 inches, 2020

This subtle field of greys yields surprising details.