Hanita Contemporary Art Museum

09/2007

Curator: Hana Barak Engel

The word "Calligraphy" means "beautiful writing". Today calligraphy is understood not in the way it used to be once. We do not expect from painters to paint family portraits because photography captures likenesses quicker and sometimes better. The same shift of expectations happened to calligraphy, too. Today we do not think of calligraphy as means of keeping our thoughts since printing does it cheaper and much more convenient for reading. Calligraphy, released from its traditional "burden" - to be the "written text", becomes "the art of written forms" -- the most flexible, intimate and immediate tool for the realization of the movements of an artist soul.

Lucy Elkivity creates her forms using her brush in very different ways. Light gray washes create illusion of the third dimension; great black masses stand out dramatically; thin, fragile black lines add character and movement. Sometimes she feels that white background, black ink and washes of different shades of gray are not enough and she adds colors: gentle pinks, pale blues.

Lucy paints or delineates sad images. Her world seems to be melancholic, inhabited by strange creatures which are composed not of heads and limbs, but of blots and lines - the calligraphic anatomy which refuses to be ruled by the mundane logic and does not speak of the species of these creatures, but of their mood, transferring it to the viewer. In some works we can recognize a familiar form - a beetle - and though maybe a zoologist would not be able to classify it, the beholder feels perfectly well "recognizing" the creature.

These works look very close to Chinese or Japanese brush painting, which is a Siamese-twin-sister of calligraphy in these cultures. The freedom of brushstrokes, the delicate transitions of gray, dramatic blacks, spontaneity and "immateriality" of her brushwork create perfect harmony. The large scale and the "blow-up" composition add another thrilling dimension to the emotionality of these works.
In this series of paintings, Lucy Elkivity writes the sequence of her calligraphic, gentle and moving personal forms.

Leo Ray

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