Liat Yossifor

Liat Yossifor’s works on paper and linen produced in the Aurobora studio are composed from cake-frosty surfaces of oil paint knifed onto the surfaces. Once this thick impasto layer of paint is applied, Yossifor scrapes and digs out lines in a feverish pace. And this continues until the paint settles dry. Her palette knife works the surfaces and leaves its trace marks creating a rhythmic outline that with concentrated viewing suggests dancers, reclining nudes, musicians, acrobats, patterns—that disappear into abstractions. Yossifor first coated her paper with black gesso and then began applying thick whitish grays over the undercoats of ultramarine and ochre that unexpectedly peek out and highlight the frenetic swirl and smooth dimensionality inherent in these intimate paintings. In the artist’s recent Ghost Walk suite, Yossifor hand cut and then water soaked raw Belgian linen before applying watercolor & gouache, allowing the pigments to float and migrate across the composition. These ephemeral linen works act as a bold counterpoint to the artist’s thickly knifed oil-based works on paper.