Flower of Eastern Europe
Winifer Skattebol
Judith Barath’s work is layered with "robust blooms and writhing forms" to awaken us to the force of nature, while being executed through digital means. On her computer, Barath uses a Wacom Tablet and digital pen, and combines elements of Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, experimenting with 3D effects, airbrushing and color-adjustment. "It’s like finger-painting," the artist says. "When I start a work and the white page appears on the screen, it is just as exciting as looking at a new canvas."
Barath grew up under her father’s tutelage at a school of applied arts in Budapest, and counts Sandro Botticelli and Alphonse Mucha among her primary influences. She went on to study graphic design and has spent her adult life working as a children’s book illustrator, animator, as well as an industrial and commercial designer for promotional agencies. One thinks of fellow Hungarian Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, who attempted to synthesize industrial forms with arts and crafts, creating symmetrical compositions of decorative, dramatic elements.
Barath has never lost her love of fine art; painting wildflowers and oil landscapes has always been her form of relaxation. "All living things have strong bonds to each other," she tells me. For these paintings, she uses an Impressionistic style with an impasto technique. Often the flowers find their way onto greeting cards, where close-up images are "like someone reaching for a miracle."
Falling and Dreaming are examples of Barath’s preoccupation with "the universe’s vital energy of organic and botanical elements." They also pulsate with sensuality, restoring faith in the sacred beauty of the female body and its life-giving powers. Many of her works are reminiscent of wide-hipped, full-bodied, fertility goddesses.
Acceptance of the body as sacred, in fact, is central to feminist spirituality. Rather than the monastic ideal of renunciation in which instinct and desire are viewed as a hindrance to union with God, such spirituality cherishes physical incarnation in all its richness. Desires and needs of the body–whether sexual or otherwise–are considered holy rather than sinful. In this sense, Barath’s art speaks to that part of us that is endlessly creative and regenerative.
Her striking, seductive images are "personal reflections of coming to terms with the connection between man and woman, the struggle to find harmony in life." When couples are captured in an intimate embrace, the viewer has a mystical experience of oneness.
As a way of showing strained relations, sometimes the artist has her couples face but not appear to see one another. In other instances, two female profiles face each other, representing opposing aspects of woman. From these perspectives, the oneness becomes almost a void of emptiness, swimming in a womb of space that is nevertheless vibrant with potential life.
Sometimes, Barath finds this vibrancy in the vistas around her home in Oak Brook, IL (a suburb of Chicago), which she loves to photograph as well as paint. At other times, she must travel further from home. When last we spoke, Barath was on her way to Central Asia to drink from a new well of inspiration.
