Sara Tandet-Ron

Statement / Sara Tandet Ron

My works in art touch upon several subjects that have occupied my thoughts in the past few years, but they all connect, this way or other, with the concept of present and absent side by side.
Femininity, an area with strong ties to the essence of my private life as a woman living in a Mediterranean milieu and the forceful drive to investigate, to define and reflect inner thoughts of women, femininity, motherhood and the place of women in society.
Ecology, the subject I got exposed to as a result of living in a community facing warlike circumstances and the irreversible damages of wars; reacting to them and demonstrating against them cause irreversible damages to nature, but most of all to the ecology of the region and consequently to the whole world.
Life and death, considering that death is an integral part of life, my endeavor is to seek the meaning of life as well as that of death, a personal quest while observing the immediate surroundings of life, various cultures and the life cycle of nature.
The main theme that forms the connecting link among the above-mentioned subjects is the Present and Absent, omnipresent in our existence at the very same time. While developing the technique applied in my work I have come upon a realm of apparently “unimportant” and dimensionless items that in their being create the “present”, a world that is seemingly invisible, a world we are not aware of, but whose impact on our lives equals in every respect the tangible world.
The special technique I have developed has a fundamental material in a horizontal position, I create the background itself by broad brushstrokes in diluted oil paints, the drawing emerges as a result of using transparent colorless varnishes (trying to capture the effect of invisibility) poured onto the wet oils, resulting in a process of non-mingling with the color material. When I stop this process I create shapes reminiscent of microscopic photography patterns, repetitive organic forms. I make use of the laws of physics for purposes of my artwork. With the help of the rounded shapes emerging out of the process of non-mingling and with color pigments I create the final composition that supports the basic idea of my subject, the work takes shape as a consequence of stopping the process, the non-mingling of the color creates the feeling of opening and closing, throbbing and evoking the illusion of 3-dimensional dynamism.
This method of work fluctuating between the ability of complete control and the situation caused by chance through the non-mingling of the materials is the phenomenon which brings forth the artwork.
This technique enables me to work with a wide range of colors enriching my art. The use of vivid colors such as: red, turquoise, yellow, green, different browns and their combinations coming into existence by painting semi-transparent layers of color and mixing them enables to create an infinite range of subtle shades and forms, a rainbow of finely tuned colors.
Applying thin coats of color and the transparent varnish enable the basic material to become actively part of the artwork. Its material affects the visual as well as the textural essence of the work, whether through the canvas, or the transparent texture such as transparencies or perspex, the outcome will always be different, and this enables me to create transparent as well as opaque works at the same time, as each one of them is relevant to a different theme.
The final result is a painting with a flat texture and uniform thickness without any grainy material, therefore they resemble prints or photographs.
The transparency of the materials emphasizes the effect of organic microscopic photography, which is the result of the process of non-mingling materials. This technique enables visual formations and creates multi-colored richness characteristic and unique in its kind.
In the past two years I was also engaged in 3-dimensional artistic creation, using different materials, - in this medium I underline the combination of the object and the importance of the material and the visual effect.