Tsisana Kavtaradze-Eyerman—a Georgian painter now living in New York—conjures mystical expressionistic scenes tinged with the fog of distant memories. Her landscapes swirl and bend in faded tones of green and orange, giving themselves over to abstracted, rhythmic repetitions, an evocative trace of Kavtaradze-Eyerman’s previous career in music. These lilting, sonorous spaces are peopled by figures between childhood and adulthood, characters whose ghostly faces recall the paintings of Edvard Munch. Pictorial space—pliable and shifting—manifests their internal states and implicit relationships.
This expressive iconography emerges from Kavtaradze-Eyerman’s charged scenes of collective memory. Recurring caged birds suggest the suffocating binding of family and cultural tradition; children being moved by parents as by puppet masters question the legacy of emotional inheritance; crisscrossing gazes and uneasy poses betray unspeakable tensions in fantastic group portraits. Kavtaradze-Eyerman’s whimsical scenes invariably evoke and re-configure the viewer’s own childhood experiences and family history. Her visions, informed by our memories, economically conjure entire narratives of cultural origins and personal histories. Tsisana Kavtaradze-Eyerman graduated from the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts.
When I was young I used to play classical music, and I think that the connection I developed with music then has had a significant impact on my painting. When I hear music, I see the colors, and when I paint I hear the music. The two art forms work with my memories to create my art.
I know I am also influenced by the culture of my native Georgia. Although I live and paint in New York now, I can feel the freedom, drama and restive rhythm that color my temperament and which come from Georgia, still with me and coming through the brush. It gives an added richness to my life and my work.
