KELLY WRITERS HOUSE |
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Sibylla Benetova: |
ARTIST STATEMENT
The technique of ripped pieces of paper also teaches you great
precision of line. Once I find the balance of a painting in my preliminary
drawings, I transfer it to the canvas, and I start building the form with
colored pieces of paper. This process is irreversible because the glue
doesn't allow repositioning or detaching the pieces. For that reason, the
numerous sketches, as well as the preliminary shuffling around of the
papers is a long and chaotic gamethe essential creative part of the
process. What follows is days of meticulous and often tedious gluing of
different shreds of color to their appropriate places based on the rhythm
in my mind.
Touching the paper is a sensation through which my hands have to go,
so that I realize in which direction the pictures will move. The art of
painting is closely tied to the material with which the artist builds the
colors. Tearing the paper in pieces in a way deconstructs the light.
Depending on how much space I leave between the bits, they let through a
different quantity of light through the crevices of the canvas. Mosaics
give you the possibility to place the object in a variety of rhythms.
This is determined both by the distances between the pieces of paper and
by the paper-free sections of the canvas. The last stage in the process is
finding the detail that completes the picture. Sometimes that takes months
of contemplating the "almost finished" painting before I finally decided
what's missing. Psychologically, things here are much different from oil
painting where a piece can be completed within a few fast strokes of a
momentary state of mind. Quite often I start work inspired by some music,
and I return to that mood by playing the particular album again. Actually,
this was also the inception of my techniqueI attempted to paint the
music
I like; to rework the art I love most into my language; to order the
melody and silences through color and light.
I would like the viewers to fragment their gaze through the pieces of
paper and construct their own image of what they want to see and feel. My
part is to delicately suggest directions to different parts of the picture
through particular details in the work. Sometimes I feel that my art is a
bit too romantic for the time we live in, however, this is part of who I
am.
Sibylla Benatova
Sibylla Benatova is a graduate of the Academy of Theatre and Film
Arts in Sofia, Bulgaria, and also holds an MA in Puppet Theatre Stage
Design. She has worked as a costume and stage designer (1994-2000) on
numerous productions while also exhibiting fine arts in several
exhibitions in Bulgaria and the US. Benatova's current paintings are her
own technique of paper collage, watercolor, and silver/gold
foil.
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