Inka Essenhigh Biography
Living and working in New York, Inka Essenhigh's paintings draw on an astute awareness of contemporary culture and her immediate environment. They are infused with a dreamlike, surreal sensibility - often directly related to a particular perception or the atmosphere of an encounter, individual or scene. Everyday events such as a picnic in the park, supermarket shopping or drinking at an inner-city bar are transformed into grand, sometimes humorously epic scenes where the artists' cartoon-like figures fuse together with the trails and currents of energy that animate the canvas. With their pristine, high-gloss surfaces and accentuated colours Essenhigh's painting style continues to move towards an almost sculptural three-dimensionality in its delineation of forms.
In her most recent work, Essenhigh has abandoned the process of automatic drawing as a method of arriving at an unexpected subject matter. Her diverse visual vocabulary acquired from years of free association is here harnessed into creating deeply atmospheric images which express a keen awareness of seasonal cycles, reminding us of our fragile coexistence with the natural world, but also its resounding beauty.
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