Liliane Tomasko, Night Shifting

Liliane Tomasko, Night Shifting, 2014

56 x 50 in.

Liliane Tomasko (b.1967) is a contemporary artist from Zurich.  Tomasko studied photography and sculpture at London's Royal Academy of Arts.  Afterwards she moved toward painting and works on paper, drawing on her experience in photography and sculpture.  Her work is quite varied, ranging from explorations of domestic spaces, to abstracted landscapes, to pure abstraction.  She often paints from polaroids, particularly in her pieces depicting folded linens, which she explores in extreme closeup.  Some of her work examines the relationship of light and line, resembling a striated desert or light shining on wood.  When she works in abstraction, Tomasko's work explores the fluidity of color and how we use it to create shapes and forms. Night Shifting is a captivating piece that calls into question our perception of shape and form. Many recognizable images seem to emerge as we study the canvas, a tree here or an animal there, but when we look again there is only a knot of colored lines.  These almost figures populate the painting and make it a work of unending interest.  The shapes we think we discern are our brains attempting to read order into this chaotic scape of color.  The earthy tones that Tomasko employs are very evocative, suggesting the depths of the ground and the spread of blood.  Tomasko uses these colors and her thick brushwork to create an extremely effective painting.