The paintings included in this exhibition explore Svec’s fascination with the mind’s ability to re-contextualize words, ideas, objects and images so that new meanings evolve through narrative associations. The pictorial spaces of Svec’s canvases draw the viewer into a world that is at once real and abstracted, strange yet familiar. Figurative forms – sometimes suggestive of super-heroes – imply protagonists that remain ambiguous, often appearing in the same work as both protector and predator. The narratives that evolve seem highly personal, and often derive from Svec’s own environment (the objects and space of her studio) and her explorations of her own consciousness. At the same time, overtones of the fractured state of the world outside of this constructed universe are also conveyed. Disparate influences such as the cubism of Braque, the work of Guston and later conceptual painting are apparent in the paintings.

While cultivating a flatness in much of the picture plane, Svec also plays with depth, subverting and still embracing the rules of perspective so that the viewer experiences radical shifts between subjects and settings, which often seem to meld into one another. An ambience pervades each work that is achieved through subtle shifts in shadow and color. “The surface of the canvas is the container where I synthesize ideas using abstract and figurative forms, depending on how I need to describe something. This combination of information, taken out of context, is forced together to suggest a different way to see the ordinary.”