Selected drawings in private collections.
BOUNDARY
charcoal on paper / 4" x 6" / •
PRIVATE COLLECTION
PRIVATE COLLECTION
MOONFLOWER
charcoal on paper / 10" x 10"
• PRIVATE COLLECTION
• PRIVATE COLLECTION
AN ECHO
Conté Pencil on paper / 6 x 7"
• PRIVATE COLLECTION
VIDERE VIDENDA
Charcoal on paper / 10 x 14"
• PRIVATE COLLECTION
• PRIVATE COLLECTION
BIRTH OF VENUS
Charcoal and Graphite on paper / 14.75 x 16.25"• PRIVATE COLLECTION
FALLING IN THE GARDEN
Graphite on paper / 8 x 11.75"• PRIVATE COLLECTION
FROM HER HANDS
• PRIVATE COLLECTION
MANO E PERA
Charcoal on paper / 7 x 7"
• PRIVATE COLLECTION
SORRELS' TREE MADONNA
Charcoal on paper / 6 x 9"
• PRIVATE COLLECTION
BRIAN
Graphite on paper / 12.5 x 15.25"• PRIVATE COLLECTION
APHROS
Graphite and Watercolor on paper / 13 x 19"• PRIVATE COLLECTION
CLOUD SHADOWS
Gold on traditionally prepared paper / 3.5 x 7.5"
• PRIVATE COLLECTION
APHRODITE
Charcoal and graphite on paper / 11.5 x 15"
• PRIVATE COLLECTION
VENUS NATURALIS #1
Charcoal and Graphite on paper / 12 x 17"• PRIVATE COLLECTION
ANNUNCIATION: THE TIME OF FLOWERS
Charcoal on paper / 19.25 x 23.50"
• PRIVATE COLLECTION
To Touch Immortality
"What I really want to express in my work is love, beauty, and spirit," says artist Barbara Kacicek. Kacicek is one of the few contemporary artists who have chosen drawing as their primary medium."Drawing ... is such an intimate, honest expression," she explains. Her intention is to capture in "in purely visual poetics the interplay between memory and emotion and imagination, to create a world of things recalled from my own experience." She emphasizes that as this is female experience, it brings forth a distinct way of looking a the body and the world.
Kacicek carefully builds up her graphite and charcoal images layer by layer, as an Old Master painter would use glazes. Her drawings, such as Birth of Venus, often take about six months of solid drawing to complete. Each has a vivid three-dimensionality, a sense of depth that is more than physical. The artist says, "The reason they look the way they do is that I like to imbue each thing with life, to bring it to a sort of peak of experience."
Kacicek often uses imagery that has very personal significance to her, but that has universal meaning as well. The combination of lunar and solar elements, for example, represents the melding of the intuitive, unconscious, female realm with the "solar" way of reason, reflection and objectivity. Her symbology, she says, is usually related to immortality. "What I'm attempting to do in my work is to express my experience as a spiritual being living a physical life on this planet."
The work of fifteenth-century Italian Renaissance masters has been a chief influence of Kacicek's artistic development. "What really attracts me to the Old Master paintings and drawings," she says, "is that they took so much care in their craft. What I see today is there's not much craft, and not much heart." Kacicek painstakingly invests these into her evocative drawings, making each a unique and indelible statement.
- Susan Osmond, Editor, The World & I
Quote
'The most beautiful thing we can experience is the Mysterious - the knowledge of the existence of something unfathomable to us, the manifestation of the most profound reason coupled with the most brilliant beauty.'- Albert Einstein
