Saturday, January 29, 2011

A Woman of all Times - Linda Stojak at Stephen Haller Gallery





Her name would be Anna or Maria.... at most Catherine (or Anne, Mary, Katharina). Anyway the most universal of European female names - not a modern fashionable one. (The British only have to think of Henry VIII and would have all names together).

At first sight she is a classical European beauty, with a pretty face and a well-proportioned figure.

At second sight there is something unsettling about her and you wonder what might have happened. Is she crying? Or bleeding? Where is she coming from and where heading for? You will never know for she is aloof. And so fragile that you are afraid she might fade away in the next second.

But the longer you keep watching her she reveals a grandeur and a defiance to stand up. Painted at the present time, she is still lapped with enormous patina.

Because she is the universal woman, who has either suffered throes and lost sons in war and malady or been abandoned because of childlessness. Who has endured infidelity and just every kind of humiliation for being female. But she has never lost her dignity.

Do these women still exist today? For sure, but not so much in our ordinary perception. Where women are mostly celebrated for their luxurious shoe collection or for presenting the condoms they have used.


American painter Linda Stojak's deeply psychological portraits dealing with the existential themes of women are on exhibition at Stephen Haller Gallery until February 19, 2011.

"LINDA STOJAK: From the Moment Passed."


First photo courtesy of Stephen Haller Gallery.







1 comment:

  1. Su, i got your your blog site through leslie. thank you for introducing me to stojak... i really loved these paintings and can't wait to check them out live. I'm liking the direction your blog is taking so far. lets meet up again soon.

    Andreia

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