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Spatial Fluidity Achieving harmony between positive and negative space is a key feature in a successful composition. The creative minds included in Spatial Fluidity are keenly aware that of the soothing effects of open space, and how each stroke of the brush alters and characterizes that space forever. With grace and beauty these superb artists showcase the dynamic potential that exists between layers of expression and the foundation of empty space beneath them.
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Su Goddard
 
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Rich swaths of color flow together like fertile alluvial floodplains in the work of British artist Su Goddard. She found in abstraction the means to express certain elements of life’s journey and the human condition, speaking through amorphous fields of radiant color. Her paintings create a direct exchange between artwork and audience, allowing a unique message to be gathered from the unfolding visual harmonies. The poured paint methods of Helen Frankenthaler have had a palpable influence in Goddard’s work, as well as the art of ancient Egypt and the cave paintings in Lascaux. Nature and the elements also play a central role in her process. “My watercolours have a species of originality,” Goddard explains. “Their evolution shares, very often, in those natural processes all around us which are dependent on the activity of water.”
Su Goddard attended the Oxford School of Art during the vibrant creative atmosphere of the 1960s. She has worked as an interior decorator and illustrator, dividing her time between residences in the South West of France and Oxford, England.
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"Frisson"
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"Nimbi"
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Aranka Israni
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Aranka Israni's expressionistic, abstract oil paintings invite us on a dual meditation of movement and stillness. The energy she transmits through her artwork is rhythmic and daring. Taking the form of smoke or water, Aranka follows the path of color like an exploration of movement and soul. Inevitably, through this meditation on grace, she personifies color: she becomes a dancer of all schools, all mythologies. Aranka reevaluates not only her subject, but also her medium: she can make oil paint act like water color. By allowing the positive and negative space to interact, to dance as it were, both intermingling until indiscernible, coexistence is met and the painting seems to float at the pinnacle.
Aranka allows color to travel through space in a non-linear sequence, yet she grounds us with some semblance of a storyline, as a ballet might. As Aranka Israni's paintings dance, so too the viewer cannot help but to sway, as if to music, full of grace.
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"Flying in Two"
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"Entwine"
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Fumio Noma
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Fumio Noma works in sumi-e, a kind of wash painting. The sumi (ink) is applied to the washi, a fibrous paper. “The states of both the sumi and the washi change on a daily basis,” notes Noma. “The washi is never the same, the sumi is never the same, so the hardest challenge when coming face to face with such organic matter is whether I can make myself understood.” But “understood” need not be a narrative term, and even Noma’s most abstract work communicates something of his inner voice with surprising clarity. Hard yet graceful curves portray energy or turmoil; blocks of opaque black muffle and overwhelm; figures separated or joined connote gentleness and quiet contemplation. Elegant dapples of quietly dynamic color are sometimes a final touch, moving the viewer to ruminate on what these unexpected elements disclose. But in the end it is always Noma they find there. “What shows on the washi is nothing but myself,” he says. “That is my moment of bliss.”
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"Flaming Desire"
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"Wave"
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Olivier Sabria
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Olivier Sabria relies on the fundamentals of art to convey multifaceted meaning. One of the most prominent aesthetic features of his work is the rudimentary line. As if they are indistinctively drawn across the canvas, Sabria’s lines have a primal power behind them. They lead the eye across the canvas, joining shapes and colors in the vein of Joan Miro. Sometimes the lines themselves bend and curve to form larger shapes. In contrasting colors to the background, the outlines suggest openness or hollowness. Seemingly plain and effortless, they signify a deconstruction of over-studied style. The abstractions make one reconsider reality. The shapes are recognizable in the form of human bodies, animals, and arrows yet communicate relationships, mind and body splitting, and religion.
While grey, black, brown, and cloudy blue give an industrial feel to the canvases, striking reds speak to the vibrancy of life. The French artist’s abstract-expressionist paintings are gritty, a cross between cave paintings and graffiti. However, in the hands of Olivier Sabria, simplicity turns complex and beautiful.
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"The Only Christian"
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"Les Deux Phares d'Alexandra"
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Jan Westerhof
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Jan Westerhof creates art that speaks of inner being. He achieves this via work on paper in acrylics, pastels, and other media that seems to be etchings on the surface of life, adumbrations of objects and pure phenomena that are meant more to indicate and evoke than literally depict. There is something in Westerhof’s technique reminiscent of carving in the bark of a tree and how a multifaceted object can be represented through a conservation of energy, imparting more with less. Westerhof tends to see life as a process of transformation—and transformation is never static, but always active and alive. Such is the logic that informs his compositional energy, which never feels burdened down by the heaviness of detail that can register when an object has settled into a state of quasi-permanence. The colorings Westerhof’s chooses are deceptive, as his intentionally muted hues will give way to luminescence just when it is least expected.
Westerhof’s is a native of the Netherlands, where he applies his talents not only to artistic creation but also in his work as a drawing therapist. Jan Westerhof invites the viewer to join him on “An Outer Journey to the Inner Light."
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"Turbulent Times"
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"Dancing on a Vulcano"
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