Kunsten, livet og alt annet.
Artist Talk TORILD STRAY
Fredags akademiet ,Bergen Norway
Oct 5 2012 7 pm

This is one of my new prints created on an aluminum plate printed in edition of 10 made in New York.
The photo (here) does not reveal all the subtleties and the outstanding effects happening on the paper (and plate).
This is the first time in a long time that I started to work with the cityscape elements again.It was all triggered by a long "brinner"(too complicated to explain here now) at a friends house in midtown Manhattan on the 50th floor.Crazy what a vista- a bit scary and poweful ,almost  ugly and beautiful. From there " I was looking at myself and down to the Twin Towers ". The building I was in I had been looking at for days hours months from the Twin Towers on the 85th fl & 91 st fl and several other floors I had studio acess to.
I had no interest in making an exact viewpoint here at this time, but I used elements from where I was standing now. It it is refering to the Empire State Building on the right in the picture.
Its full of shadows , mirrored images and creatures, people keep pointing them out to me.The indian print master that I worked with pointed out something interesting about looking at the image/ the print from an angle AND the image constelates in a peculiar different way.
Anyhow you may think artists are crazy people that see things others don't see and elaborate on that and take themselves too seriously.Well I saw somethwing and it is dam serious ; an image can mirror some of what is in the undercurrent in this life and I think that is amazing and very real and I feel humble.Thank you for your time (if you made it this far in the text in my Stray english)
It is a strong image and composition.The city is an extension of the human body to quote myself from the time I spent painting and drawing the city non stop for a year in the Twin Towers ,WTC

                                       NY METAMORPHOSIS  II,  Printet in NY 2012                                             

drawing in my studio sunday with the model

THIS WEEK LOCAL NEWS

UPCOMMING IN NYC :

Torild Stray will participate in the 13th annual White Box benefit action honoring Ai Weiwei with the Richard J.Massey Foundation- White Box Arts and Humane Award

http://issuu.com/whiteboxart/docs/artist_postcards

Wednesday April 25, 2012 6-10PM

 White  Box  Gallery

329 Broome Street

New York, NY 10002

                                                   NEW PAINTING

This is a large oil  painting that I have been working on for a while. It is starting to come together in a new way now, through drawing and redrawing and colors are building up and my first idea of making a white painting is still there but infused with new and other whites.
Industry City studio Brooklyn ,T.STRAY

The viking language Rune means "Secret knowledge and wisdom".

The combination of my nordic/norwegian background ,with its dramatic harsh and beautiful landscape and unique light (summernights and borealis).

The Nordic mystery and darkness,the depths in the psycke combined with the unique experience of
new york and the urban cityscape -

neonlights and the intensity of the melting pot.

To me this contrast releases a new painting language where the content is timeless and the imagery has healing qualities and like the runes share something from the depth of mankind, beyond life end death.

The imagery like the runes can bring out a direct pure and intuitive image.

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Oil on linen,private collection,New York

Eruption II, 41,5 in x 30,5 in 2010

ink washes , chachoal,crayons,eraser  on paper

Belongs in a collection in Marocco

                                           
                                 Metamorphosis,41in x 60 in, 2010/11
                                 collage ,collage mixed media &papers ripped and glued
                                 led,chalk,acrylic paint,ink,housepaint etc 2011 

New York in charcoal (detail,14ftx5ft)TStray, as seen in 1998 from studios in twin towers

NY , 14 FT X 5 FT CHARCHOAL ON SAUNDERS PAPER,WTC STUDIOS 85TH FLOOR 1998 BY TORILD STRAY

Last night outside Showroom 170,great performance at the gallery in the LES.I also enjoyed going to see Susanna's small night paintings at Steven's Gallery /shfap

A detail from one of the prints in the limited NY edition.
I started this stone a year ago and I am now on the 3rd image in the stone.
In other words I am continuing to remove,redraw and adding to the image and sealing it in the stone
Interesting .

Last night at Robert Blackburn studios in Hell's Kitchen at The Elisabeth Foundation NYC :

I am sealing the image in the stone (here) for my new lithography prints. The image in the stone is darker than the prints themselves as they have more tones/values/lines/varations & surprises.

                 8feet x 8feet work on saunders watercolor paper in progress in the Brooklyn studio

Yes this quote I like :

"The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him. As a human being he may have moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist he is "man" in a higher sense - he is "collective man," a vehicle and moulder of the unconscious psychic life of mankind." 

“Painting for me is an active dialogue between the unconscious and the conscious where new form starts to emerge with a life of its own, charged with content. The content reveals the expression of new form in Art; figurative, yet abstract and metaphorical. With this language, the image can transcend the individual human experience, and express the rawest aspects of the human condition with powerful meaning.” Torild Stray.

" Torild Stray integrates abstract and representational painting  to create depictions of the human condition. There is an otherwordly tenacity about the figures in her paintings."

" The vocabulary of the paintings draws from a gathered iconography - an iconography of personal and emotional significance that restores to each universal symbol the value stripped by the cant (insincere statements ) that has become so common in our age."
Quotes by O.Karlin, independent NY writer

Biography

Torild Stray has held exhibitions of her art work in New York and Norway since the early 1990s. Her vision and commitment as a painter has brought her critical acclaim and a strong international following of collectors. She has been the recipient of many awards and scholarships, including The Angus Gund Scholarship, The New York Times Scholarship, The Scandinavian Society Cultural Award, a Charles Revson Fellowship and The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Artist in Residence Program in New York. Stray works out of her studio in Brooklyn,New York