Eva Struble
Eva Struble’s monumental paintings draw from the traditions of landscape,architecture, and abstraction. Taking inspiration from sources as diverse as antique Arabic miniatures and contemporary Asian construction, Struble’s motifs balance the odyssey of nature with the carefully ordered precision of design. Rendered with acidic hues and an exaggerated consideration of space and placement, Stuble’s landscapes resolve as affected dioramas, envisioning otherworldly tableaux through their compositional pastiche.
Struble approaches the act of painting itself as a physical manifestation, allowing the eclectic application of her materials to create a disorientating illusion of space: an erased void of a mountain conveys an aberrant weight, the perspective of architecture gives way to its flattened decorative patterning, skies are rendered with day-glo pop sheen, and earth swills as layers of mellifluous splotches. The physical impossibilities implied through Struble’s painterly manipulation are made believable through her inclusion of intricate detail, as blades of grass, grains of sand, and weathered dabs of rock are set within her scenes with a theatrical preciousness.
Struble’s most recent works, To The End and Acid Mine Drainage I, are part of her Superfund series; a collection of paintings inspired by toxic waste sites. Using this subject matter as a departure point for visual invention, Struble offers a complex paradox, merging an idealised beauty nurtured and improved with eerie transgressions of artificiality and toxicity.