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Zlata Jaanimagi(Jaanimägi)

Softly melodic yet spiritedly rhythmic compositions distinguish Estonian-born Zlata Jaanimagi’s paintings. Working primarily in oil on canvas, Jaanimagi’s brushwork is both alluring and animated, soothingly bravura and swept throughout her paintings. Though diverse in style and subject matter, these works convey a certain tranquility, emanating peace and calm to their viewers. Slightly fantastical in theme, the paintings are rooted in tangible forms and instilled with a rich, playful whimsy. Jaanimagi uses a cool palette, with colors that contrast in a transfixing alchemy which radiates into not only two-dimensional spaces, but our three-dimensional spaces as well. While the artist’s inspiration comes from her own psyche, she finds stimulation in her viewers’ reactions to her work. “Watching people’s reactions to my paintings is wonderful, because they are all very different but always positive,” explains Jaanimagi. “Everyone sees what he/she wants to see and it inspires me to new ideas.” Native to Estonia, Jaanimagi was educated in St. Petersburg, Russia and is currently living in Stockholm, Sweden. She trained and worked throughout her life in such varied arts as drawing, painting, art direction and film and theater directing. Her multimedia experience is evident in her paintings, where a strong, clear graphic message is predominant. Above all, her work speaks of a love of risk-taking, and a willingness to take the unconventional path to find the right emotional payoff. “I like to experiment with colors and shapes, and mix different art styles,” she says. “There is no art without fantasy.In all of my paintings I express myself completely, and the process leaves me feeling absolutely light, free and open to something new and beautiful. One unusual aspect of my work is that some of my paintings can form different images when combined together. My paintings have positive energy, which makes them easy to relate to, but at the same time each one is based around a central, often complex idea that springs from my own inner feelings, my state of mind and my fantasies, dreams and illusions. Although the brushstrokes are dynamic, with a strong rhythm and contrast of colours, they are never aggressive, instead carrying peace, calm and love of life with them like an aura.” Her richly colored canvases are deceptively straightforward in composition and shape, yet the layered iconography and the endless scope of her imagined spaces result in work that holds viewers captive and leaves a haunting imprint. Recalling the most mysterious aspects of symbolist and surrealist art, Jaanimagi creates bright, centralized tableaux in which trees weep, eyeballs stand upright and the blue sky is always infused with a deeply lived-in sense of exuberance. Though she sometimes works in straight oil, Jaanimagi often embellishes her paintings with minute pieces of ceramic overlay, extending the indefinable to the very physicality of her work. Neither two- nor three-dimensional, neither narrative nor non-representational, Jaanimagi’s work shifts its shape with every new viewer.

www.zlataart.com