Reinveted landscape
The central theme of the series of canvases and watercolors
is once again a return, a turning of attention to the landscape present here,
which we might overlook due to its mundaneness and apparent familiarity. Oleňová
has chosen the locality of Sandberg in the Devínská Nová region as the goal of
her research, while in plein-air sketches and large-scale canvases she goes
from the whole to the detail and back. She analyzes the structure of rocks as
landscape-forming elements, often reaching the edge of abstraction in the form
of decomposition. The form of building the image corresponds to the
transformational influences acting on the matter of these rocks. Their layering
or natural tumbling by trickles of flowing water thus finds its counterpart in
the applied artistic procedures. What has been seen and known for a long time
is thus subjected to a new, more attentive look, broken into individual parts
and reassembled anew. A rediscovered landscape emerges from this synthesis. (Jana
Babušiaková)
In the paintings I created as part of the Reinvented
Landscape series, I painted bold lines that I drew from watercolor studies. The
contour line outlines the shape of massive blocks of limestone and sand rocks
that are located on Sanberg. They appear on the painting, sometimes they are
deeply hidden under layers of paint, other times they were painted last, ala
prima in the wet layer. They shape and absorb each other, like time layers on
rocks. There is a significant shape deformation that goes from the lines of
rocks to the outlines of flowers. The direction of the brush copies the shape
and guides my view from detail to whole.
The characteristic colors of this series of
paintings are sand tones, earthy dark shades in an organic structure in
contrast with white. I base my colors on the place I am depicting. The
intention was to give the impression of looseness, instability and
changeability of rocks. Massive rocks located on the first level look like
black volcanic stones in which fossils are hidden. In several paintings, there
is a light contrast, which I tried to emphasize the sharp lines of the rocks. I
worked with thin and liquid oil layers. In this way, I explored the movement of
the water of the sea, which was once located in this country and shaped it. The
structure symbolizes the diversity of the surface of the geological formations
found there.
