2006-8 SWING

Mr. Kelly McCray ,Edward Day Gallery, Nov. 2007 :
"Sesar-Raffay currently treads a tremendous tight rope between divergent cultures where past memories and immediate life experiences shape the dynamic layers of her painting process.
In her artist statement for Swing, Nada alludes to previous memories of torrential waterfalls, brilliant blue summer skies and aqua waters that infuse the Croatian seaside with luxurious splendor.
She also mentions the Canadian Fall where urban dwellers for a very short period of time experience nature’s full explosion of colour as reds, yellows and oranges paint the streetscape foliage.
It is the turbulent force of Croatian memory and repetitive Toronto urban experiences that push Sesar-Raffay’s fusion of colour to explode beyond the limitations of the canvas.
Through her Swing series, Sesar-Raffay intuitively fuses divergent cultures into a body of paintings that traverse the line between visual representation and emotional impressions.
In paintings such as Swing 5, Secret Garden, Melting Point and Flood chaotic, powerful swirling, strokes take the viewer into an internal, intimate maelstrom.
From a distance the paintings reveal a calmer contemplation, where impressionistic visions, through seemingly arbitrary arrangements, fuse to propel the artist’s internal narrative through a canopy of startling colour.
It is through this current Swing body of paintings that the artist has responded to the challenge of cultural diversity and impressions of representation that pull the viewer into magnetic fields of force constructed through intuitive colour dialogues. "
Mr. Kelly McCray
Edward Day Gallery, Nov. 2007
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SWING/New Work, 2006-2007
The summer of 2006 was full of light, sun…
I started in white, with a thick layer across the whole canvas 6x6….
And then after the first explosions of white, blue (the Waterfalls series) I started building up the spaces between the brush strokes…
It seemed like the light between the branches of a tree… beyond abandoned, lost ships somewhere to the north… I wrapped color around some random shapes……
In the spring of 2007 new colors, oil…. A new, fresh tomorrow…
The large white picture awaited intervention, a response…
The surface of the painting offered resistance with its three dimensions. ..
a central light streams out from the dark edges, the light actually shines up from the depths… the space is real and generous… the painting is virtually limitless; beyond its frame it is limitless..
By ripping out the constraints the path was opened to light… The paints mixed with white… light, summer, pastel… memory of summer, sea, longing… I painted in the “interspaces”…
Travel with no schedule, research… I reworked the already acquired shapes of fields of paint with the ease of a bold conqueror…
I wanted experience, and the power of breaking free…not possession
I reworked the paintings and discovered in each one a host of new possible constellations, colors, forms… A new power came to me that summer, excitement, encounter…
I started new paintings, on pure, blank canvas… with no foundation… Powerful, decisive, resilient, rhythm, energy, everything built in…
And then it happened, resoluteness, ease, strength… and the brush finally defined, with its own rhythm, led by an inner acceptance of the unacceptable, the impossible, in the primary colors of nature, a mature summer, rich, firm, yet sensual…
Still undetermined, yet defined on canvas… Determined, yet undefined…
SWING! That’s it.
I painted in lines, interweaving paints, quick, wet to wet… fresh…
The possible is resolute, immediate, fresh yet deep…
It is autumn already, I don’t know what it is, but I am painting in ripe earth tones, the fruitful dying summer…
Nada Sesar Raffay,2007 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------