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The trees I have painted and drawn while working outdoors in Riverside Park, NYC have revealed an elusive human presence that is not realistic but evocative in the subtle similarities that link tree-forms and people. At first I became attracted by the textural patterns and peeling bark of the sycamore trees, but in time, possibly because I was also drawing from the live model, my vision changed. The figure (especially female) and tree limbs fused in my psyche transforming them into a hybrid structure. Since then, I have been inspired by the symbols of transformation in Roman poet Ovid’s work, The Metamorphosis, that has sustained my efforts to convey awareness of the human interconnection with nature to the public through my art. ..."here is an emphasis on the female body as an icon, and by extension, a surrogate for women�s collective experience. Allegory is inherent in Hrbacek�s approach, a kind of extended metaphor, in which a psychological drama is performed at a symbolic remove. A case of possession strongly comes to mind: a human captured by a tree or turning into one, like Daphne in Greek mythology, becoming a laurel tree to escape the god Apollo�s lustful pursuit. As a source of the Daphne image, Hrbacek cites Ovid�s Metamorphosis, the Roman poet�s mock-epic of love and transformation. The self, capable of concealing and dramatizing its mutable identity, is central to these paintings. Hrbacek�s Light Search is prime example of this tendency to create from the natural a theater of the self, making a character out of a tree, with hand-like branches extending beyond the frame." John Mendelsohn
Walter Idlewild |
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