Vista, Ultramarine – Burnt Umber Painting

Virginia Glasmacher explores a broad range of means of expression in her painting. The artist is rooted in the modernist tradition, taking the Abstract Expressionism and Art Informel as a point of departure for her painterly investigations. For her, embracing abstraction does not mean a departure from the representational world. At times one seems to recognize a horizon, a reflecting water surface, cliff formations, general elements of landscape. Yet the viewer’s eye is always brought back to the surface, is drawn to patches of color or brushstrokes. Spontaneously emerging forms, such as those created by thin paint running down the canvas, are integrated into the overall composition. Individual brushstrokes remain as traces of the artist’s hand, thereby letting the viewer follow the development process. The emergence of the image involves the interplay of consciously made decisions and a response to the given, to what has already emerged. In this artistic strategy, the most important stage is not the beginning of the painting process but its end, which is marked by the decision not to add anything else to the image, the decision that it is ultimately “found”.