By Devin wilger
N-R Writer
It’s a forest of birch and poplar at the Godfrey Dean Art Gallery. Local artist Barbara (Kush) Kondratoff’s show Plaster & Birch, running at the Godfrey Dean until May 23, explores her work with Venetian plaster, much of which is centered around birch trees.
The birch tree is a comfortable place to start, reveals Kondratoff, and she says that it’s how she gets back into form when she starts painting. It’s a subject she’s comfortable painting and one that has a wide range of possibilities, from colours to context to form. They’re also something that gets along well with the texture and the plaster.
“If I haven’t done anything for three months, I’ll paint some birch trees, and it’ll get me in the mood to do the rooster. It’s a comfort zone... I’m not sure what it is, it’s just that comfort zone.”
While she has been an artist for decades, making her living teaching art in high school, the plaster is a relatively new medium for Kondratoff. She says it forces her to be less precise than her other work, which can be very intricate and detailed.
“As soon as you get that crack, you’re forced to deal with it. It’s a looser way because of that.”
The paintings also give a picture of Kondratoff’s changing outlook on life, as the colors and subject matter get warmer and brighter as they get more recent. While she says she was not conscious of it, she believes that they reflect her outlook on life, going from a low point of a cancer diagnosis and working through recovery, using the paintings as a form of therapy. She says that after she was initially diagnosed, she painted as much as she possibly could, and encouraged sick friends to do the same, because it was a way to cope with her situation. Looking at how her work has changed since recovering, she admits that the increased amount of warmth in the work reflects her life.
“At that point, it was definitely a coping mechanism... I see a lot of growth.”
She also says that she is constantly trying new things and doing new techniques with plaster, as she gets more confident with the medium and what she can do while experimenting. Still, no matter what, she believes that painting birch will always be the way she begins, because she doesn’t think she’ll ever run out of possibilities with the subject, and it’s the most comfortable thing to paint of all.
Kondratoff credits Don Stein, executive director of the Godfrey Dean, with convincing her to put the work together for a bigger show. She says that seeing it on display has had confirmed that she was on to something and that she has a body of work that fits together, something that putting it in a new context helps bring out.
