What excites me about her work is her treatment of atmosphere, the stuff that is around everything and everyone all the time, the thing that connects us all. Whether you take a metaphysical or scientific view of this “stuff” (and the two are at times so closely related you can’t tell the difference) Stanka in a pure way reflects it in her work using marks and gesture to almost sculpt a life into the space surrounding her figures. She is a masterful figure and portrait artist but is her treatment of atmosphere that really sparked me when I saw it. When I hear her talk about this “stuff”, this “atmosphere” in her video and different articles she has written it is like hearing someone put into words my own thoughts and I wanted to be talking to her saying “yes, I know! It is so good to hear someone put it into words, and form!”
I feel a little guilty for letting myself play with that kind of treatment of atmosphere. First because I have so much to learn about simply rendering and the nuts and bolts of drawing, I feel as if I have not earned the right to play with any form of abstraction or stretching.
Secondly, because I admire her so much that I feel like I risk imitating her style. I hear this feeling is pretty common with artists starting to branch out – but you have to start somewhere, and you have to start where you are moved deeply and we each make our own marks. So it is in the spirit of finding my own way of expressing that atmosphere, that energy surrounding a thing that I use her vision as an inspiration.
I was glad to hear that Stanka teaches her technique in her workshops. Would I love to spend a weekend in one of those workshops! Though for me the technique is a doorway to my own understanding of that atmosphere, and my own eventual unique expression of that space. As it should be.
Thanks Stanka, where ever you are… you inspire me daily!
Sandra Walton Art - Blog Archive 