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.
