Aleksandra Rdest is a local painter and an associate at the Tatar Gallery on King West. When she's not busy working at the gallery, she's slaving away in her studio adding layers of paint to her newest creations. A graduate from OCAD in 2002, Rdest has produced various series of work each year since 2001. She has participated in gallery showings all across Canada as well as exhibited in Chicago and Japan.
Over the years, Rdest's work has been constantly growing and evolving to the ethereal state where it is today. She says she can't keep painting the same painting but taking a look at her back catalogue, a thread can still be sewn connecting each series from year to year. Her current process involves layers upon layers of acrylics and oils which react in additive and reductive ways when mixed. Like layers of the earths stratosphere, each piece is composed over an extended period of time.
Rdest recently spent a year and a half in Newfoundland where she attended an artist residency at Pouch Cove. Once there she fell in love with the landscape and the people so she decided to extend her stay. Her daily walks in the woods and climbs along the Atlantic coast were a source of constant and refreshed inspiration. Her interest in the microscopic elements in the environment, such as the lichen on the rocks and fungi in the forest, were captured in thousands of photos which directly and indirectly fed back into her work.
Now that Rdest has returned to Toronto, she finds herself in the midst of transition. "This interest has turned allegorical rather than literal," Rdest revealed. "I'm currently exploring these relationships through the stand in of gestural strokes and swoops of paint. My work continues to explore attraction and repulsion through an implied perspectival depth and is very much about seduction using luscious colours and surfaces."
Now that Rdest has returned to Toronto, she finds herself in the midst of transition. "This interest has turned allegorical rather than literal," Rdest revealed. "I'm currently exploring these relationships through the stand in of gestural strokes and swoops of paint. My work continues to explore attraction and repulsion through an implied perspectival depth and is very much about seduction using luscious colours and surfaces."
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Beautiful work. And i can really see your east coast influences in here aswell. Don't ask me how though(haha)
Best,
Your work is wonderful! Must have been that Newfoundland air? You have a very strong design sense but it is combined nicely with the fluid, masterly control of your medium. I am very impressed.
Beautiful work! I love the color combinations. I can see myself staring at your painting for a long time. :)
Absolutely GREAT PAINTINGS,thrilling floating colour spaces in permanent metamorphosis, especially Soothing Sensation!
All best wishes from Vienna
Gerald Trimmel