Maria Chevska

First, let me say that I am really, REALLY drawn to these first three works. Somehow, writing just "does it" for me. Don't know why or how, but I'm just always drawn to works that incorporate writing.
The appeal of the blue one is that you can't read it, but only appreciate the activity of the letters.
And the white one is just a great example of how wonderful white on white can be. It gives the effect of being a special cloth or probably a relief carving on stone.


It's unfortunate that I can't find anything (at the moment) in English to explain how she made these first 3 or the thought process behind them. Most of the sites were non-English. For image results, Google was no help, use Yahoo.

And then she does this other thing with the disappearing(drowning) letters/words. You can only read so much - which makes it more about the letters; keeps the whole thing mysterious.

the following quote from the Andrew Mummery Gallery at www.art-online.org explains her work.

"For the last decade Chevska's paintings have employed language - its material and visual manifestation - to represent everyday emotional, spatial, and temporal actualities. On the surface of the paintings short fictional extracts, or single words, are poured in kaolin to form a raised text. These pourings, in effect, paint the words. The extracts are borrowed from the short stories of Raymond Carver and tend to describe, or list, commonplace objects and interiors. There is a doubling of representation here as we experience both the art object as material 'thing', and the connotative, representational content of words. The uneventfulness of these descriptions, however, both heighten and thwart the sense that we are about to be told a story, a narrative that we must decipher from the fragments of text poured across the surface of the paintings. Other shorter words are also used. These are the 'glue' or verbal lulls (eh, ah, mmm) that frequently occur throughout communication. Again, we have a sense of a narrative about to be told and yet deferred, the words ultimately becoming an end in themselves.The newer series of paintings, Why Don't You, have evolved from the earlier Mimic and Eyeballing series. Produced by pouring white kaolin on to canvas , these paintings also re-present words and phrases; however, unlike earlier work, paint is then repeatedly poured on to the canvas until the words and phrases are almost, but not quite, obliterated. The weight of the settled paint, in turn, indents and smooths the soft canvas at it’s centre, both negating the act of writing and yet focussing our attention on the remnants of text - still legible to the viewer as they shift their position around the painting - that remain at the edges of the canvas ."