With their austere realism and complex composition, Eva Armental's oil paints strive to present the tension inherent in our means of viewing, perceiving, and taking in reality. The cool bluish gray of tree trunks is regularly invoked in these studies of fragmentation, as well as tree branches set against a stark sky, as if viewed through a steel-gray haze, or distorted by the blur of motion. There is also a sense of totemic mystery to the trees in Eva's paintings, and a ritualistic repetition to their portrayal. Tall, long-limbed, often starkly denuded of leaves, the trees are rarely shown in their totality, and often extend beyond the canvas. And yet the detail, the intensity of where the artist has aimed her focus, draws us in: where tree limb meets trunk, or where the branches intersect against the sky.
Incompleteness, fragmentation, the phenomenon of our subjectivities--the philosophical implications and aesthetic choices which inform Eva Armental's work give these oil paints a tenacious and quiet intensity.
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