Andreana DOBREVA

A key element to Andreana Dobreva’s practice is her contemporary, painterly handling of historical sources.  These provide the work with figurative aspects which stand alongside abstraction in dualism on the canvas. The sections of still lifes, human figures or fruit appear as silhouettes stabilising the movement of the eye across the canvas for brief moments. For instance, in Dobreva’s small-scale female portraits on paper, the visible facial features, such as eyes, nose, cheeks, provide a moment of pause, a counterbalance to the abstract parts.

 

Simultaneously, the contemporary abstract brush strokes both destabilise and set the composition into motion. Shapes disintegrate, forms pour into forms; flowing in, out and into one another. The figurative elements become pure essence of paint. The theatrical settings, the dramatic light sources, the choices of colour and the exuberant brushwork all speak in a lush, ornate language of plasticity.

 

In Dobreva’s large-scale oil paintings another compositional element manifests; as the artist withdraws from the active process, allowing the paint itself to flow organically, paint drippings direct the creative process and the composition for those few moments.