MARY HRBACEK’S “Metamorphosis”
By Lily Faust
In her recent charcoal drawings and paintings, Mary Hrbacek depicts a fanciful view of nature that is imprinted with the human spirit. Her imaginative work involves the anthropomorphic possibilities within that most prevalent emblem of nature, the tree, yielding a hybrid materiality between it and man.
As whimsical as the results may be, these drawings are clearly informed by the physical world: tree trunks that sprawl to catch the air, roots that reach into the earth like fingers, stubs of trees interrupted by death or decay. Mirroring the source of Hrbacek’s inspiration, her drawings comprise legible images that are clearly about the land and its outpouring. Simultaneously, though, the viewer finds herself in an eerie topology that is charged with hints of human beings; –a branch ending in a fist-like stub, or a limb yielding phallic connotation. Hrbacek seems to explore the amalgam of nocturnal and hidden facets within creature hood, chancing upon a human face on a hollowed tree trunk or a female torso on the rippled bark. The dimensionality of the figurative elements is enhanced by Hrbacek’s excellent control of charcoal. She utilizes it skillfully, grafting wild beings of her imagination into reality.
Conventional notions of abstraction are also present, characterized by sinuous, energized lines that demonstrate the artist’s intuitive take on nature as a field of discovery. These lines represent the pronounced linearity of branches, interrupting the softly contoured tree trunks, inviting the eye to travel from one edge of the paper to the other. The jagged outlines of leaves create loose patterns that, in a formal sense, contrast playfully with the solid, voluminous tree trunks. These linear markings mottle the drawing’s surface, creating ripples on the pictorial space. Subtle details such as knots in the wood serve a dual purpose. Both as a knot in the tree trunk and also as the eye of an unknown creature, they serve their figurative purpose. They can also be read as circular elements in an abstraction, creating the necessary rhythm in the balance of fluid lines, black and white contrasts and vertical volumes. But beyond that, these drawings are amalgams of nature and its human face, involving metaphors of transference and transformation. They convey Hrbacek’s personal narrative, recalling that precise moment in time when the spirit of man materialized in hauntingly conceived scenario.
