Artist: Trude Viken
Title: Diary Notes
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Size: 11.75 x 9
Year: 2022
Notes: Hand Signed and Dated on Verso. Custom Framed 13 x 11 Inches.
Residing and creating in Oslo, Norway, Trude Viken defies artistic constraints as a 'colorist' of boundless imagination. Her canvases overflow with a mesmerizing fusion of flesh-toned hues, ashy grays, and enigmatic greens, juxtaposed with vibrant reds, oranges, yellows, and luminous pinks. The lingering aroma of oil paint fills the air, while her palette, comprising both earthly and otherworldly shades, simultaneously evokes feelings of sensuality and unease.
Viken's art beckons an engaged audience to appreciate its tactile presence—a landscape crafted from the very essence of oil paint itself. In this regard, her creations resemble ever-changing weather patterns, as capricious as human moods. A visage morphs into a verdant, follicled mass, with a bubblegum-pink foundation, while white brushstrokes mimic the contours of clouds or wings.
Her portraits, born from the ordinary, evolve into reveries that articulate our innermost experiences and our most tangible emotions, captivating us with their profound psychological depth. With Viken's deft touch, layers of oil paint transmute into swirling eyes, noses, mouths, ecstatic grins, or sly smirks, culminating at her discretion. Rows of contorted, molded faces coalesce like a macabre family album of fleeting emotions and impulses.
The ultimate strokes bear little resemblance to their initial swaths, as shapes dissolve and reappear, for the layers of paint are reworked numerous times, allowing for near-endless artistic experimentation.