Veiling the surface:
textiles transformed

Christiane Wyler’s art is remarkable for two things: her innovative and original creation of surface texture, and her bold, exciting use of colours that are often acidic in their intensity, but always tempered by an overlay of colour that takes off the hard edge. In previous collections the artist has used whatever came to hand to create her compositions, including dried pulses and corrugated cardboard among other things, all carefully applied to the surface of the canvas before being treated with her colours.

In this latest collection of paintings, the idea of surface has been developed; it has been more subtly fashioned so that the underlying image is illusory, less defined. It seems, in many of the paintings, as though a gauze curtain has been draped across the underlying colours to create layers of colour and texture that always seem to be shifting beneath the veil. It suggests a greater depth and dimension to the paintings.

In this way the paintings have been brought into existence. Paintings that are bright and bold, burnished and shimmering, glowing greens, cool blues, reds and oranges that seem to glow and radiate with energy. The sense of energy may be no accident, for as she fashioned the surface, bringing the images into being, the artist describes how the colours and fabrics seemed to suggest their own forms and take on an independent existence; the artist became the tool they used.

The paintings have names, but are best appreciated and understood by ignoring those names and concentrating upon what the images suggest to the individual. A great part of their appeal is that they do not dictate to the viewers, each being free to peer through the veil and decipher their own picture.

Hence the burning intensity of a flame may spring out of lines and columns of orange and yellow in one painting, while in another a deep burnished hovering orb suggests the sun, dripping beads of sweat that pour out over the ground below. In another, a coppery globe becomes the tired sun dipping towards the western horizon, while a companion piece becomes the cool silvery moon floating through the cool, quiet of the night.

Only the human imagination can ultimately reveal the messages of the paintings, and each person has the freedom to create their own interpretation and conjure their own picture. This, then, is what lies behind the veil, partially hidden, never fully revealed, half glimpsed, half suggested.

Dr. Sian E. Jay