ArtistsNetwork.com 41F
or some artists, painting a
picture involves an adventure,
a quest to discover something
new and important about the world
and the way they relate to it. This
is a very different enterprise from
simply seeking to capture appear-
ance through good drawing and
skilled handling of tone and color.
Instead, the artist uses subject mat-
ter merely as a starting point, an
image to engage with and respond to
with paint, color and gesture. As the
dialogue between artist and subject
progresses, nuances of atmosphere
and meaning emerge, qualities
that the artist may eventually latch
onto and organize to bring about a
new work of art. The painting that
emerges through such a process is
inclined to be autonomous, expressive
and deeply personal.
So it is with Stanka Kordic, whose
paintings center on the figure but
embroil it in a long dance with
extremely energetic paint handling
of a kind we usually associate with
abstract painting. An accomplished
portrait painter, Kordic sets her fine
rendering of form against a huge
repertoire of abstract mark-making,
creating a dialogue that encompasses
formal issues, such as pictorial space,
while bringing in the opportunity for
powerful expression. Using knives,
scrapers, squeegees, fingers and more
or less anything else to deliver paint,
she alternately establishes and attacks
her central image, often obscuring
or obliterating elaborate passages of
rendering with strokes, marks, glazes,
sanding or even thrown paint. But
no matter how lively things become,
Kordic never loses the figure entirely.
Battered, transformed and rebuilt in
a succession of passes over several
weeks of work, the figure remains
a recognizable focus of the picture.OPPOSITE
Portrait of Eileen
oil on panel, 16x20
BELOW
Threshold
oil on panel, 57x30