Eliza Wagener

Eliza Wagener paints in ink and oil and lets chance lead. Paint with a high water content runs in streaks across the canvas, the liquid glaze forming an abstract, arbitrary field, and these random traces set the terms for everything that follows. From them Wagener draws out shapes and figures, layering ink and oil paint and thinning it with the brush to keep it transparent. Her motifs come without preliminary drawing or a narrative worked out in advance; she treats them as a reality found within the canvas. Hazy silhouettes of intertwined bodies and animals appear like semi-transparent visitors, present only for a moment before fading back into their surroundings, in melancholic, fairy-tale-like images tied to Wagener's own emotional world.