"The Dawning of an Aspect"

Finalist
Category: Painting

Liat Yossifor
United States

Description: These paintings explore the abstraction that a war landscape depicts in the way that bodies and natures exist together. Initially, this series of paintings is hard to discern due to the use of a wet-on-wet technique in which I excavate figurative masses from a dark field of thick paint (the figurative elements unravel after a sustained viewing). The work is inspired by cinematography from Malick’s The Thin Red Line and the familiar battle paintings of Theodore Gericault, and Francisco Goya. My paintings move between over-the-top theatrics (i.e., sentimentalized cinematic & romantic references) and my connection to conflict and war.