Redd Walitzki “The Midsommar Dream”
September 22nd – October 27th, 2018
Opening Reception with the artist: Saturday, September 22nd, 2018, 6-8pm
Northport, NY– Haven Gallery is pleased to present “The Midsommar Dream”, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Redd Walitzki. “The Midsommar Dream” is a glimpse of a rare moment, in between worlds, where Walitzki’s mortals intermingle with creatures of mythology and imagination. Heavily inspired by Finnish landscape and lore, each painting blends ones dreams and realities together with the artist’s ethereal use of watercolor and delicate detailing of her laser cut panels. Each painting is nebulous thematically and technically; her medium and painted elements pulsate and transcend echoing the flux of time and change between realms. They embrace the mysteries and the divine found in the deep recesses of forests and more intimately, in the most magical depths of ourselves.
Artist Statement
“Do you contend with dreams? Do you wrestle with shadows?”
The visionaries and dreamers that make up the cast of Redd Walitzki’s “The Midsommar Dream” all inhabit this twilight realm between darkness and light. These lush paintings were inspired by the misty forests and folktales Redd encountered during an Artist Residency in Finland, and feel as if perched on the brink between our world and a land of shadow and myth. In folk magic Midsommar was a very potent night where the veil between worlds is thinner, and will-o’-the-wisps and other magic creatures may be summoned deep within the woods. The sylphine figures in these paintings wield this power, or perhaps the inner power that comes from deeper psychic states and visions.
Creative Process
To create these delicate paintings, Redd uses a a cutting-edge technique which combines oil painting and mixed media on laser-cut panel. The process starts with a watercolor underpainting/study to begin the composition & texture, which is transferred to the panel on ricepaper and then lasercut. Each piece is completed with many layers of oil glazes for depth and detail.
About Redd Walitzki
Redd Walitzki is a leading New-Contemporary artist, born in Germany and currently based in the US. Androgynous and elaborate, her pieces are a marker of life, commemorating a moth’s four week- long flutter in the same celebratory way they do a human being’s ninety-year journey. Much of her work is inspired by the lush rainforests of the Pacific Northwest and the ornate Baroque ornamentation of her native Bavaria. The vivid muses in her paintings are influenced by the glamour of high fashion, but Walitzki’s works also often explore the darker side of human impact on ecology.
Walitzki completed her B.F.A. from Cornish College of the Arts with a concentration in painting. Her art has been featured in galleries on both coasts of the U.S. and Internationally, as well as in various publications including Beautiful Bizarre Magazine and American Art Collector.
