Barbara Demšar: Lit by the Sun

At the Ivan Grohar Gallery, Barbara Demšar’s work is presented with a recent cycle of paintings titled Lit by the Sun, which was created between 2018 and 2020. The cycle consists of fifteen medium-format works painted with acrylics on canvas, which are divided into two interconnected parts according to the theme and the way they explore motifs. The first gallery room features a “yellow” cycle, which carries the same name as the exhibition itself, and the second gallery room shows a set of works titled The Wonderful New Crazy World, for which the artists used a different, more subdued palette. For instance, backgrounds consisting of distinct floral motifs are paired with “warm” shades of grey and in some other works the artists went back to using the warm colours resulting from the earth basking in the sun – orange, ochre and red.

The entire Lit by the Sun cycle is about the way Barbara Demšar experiences nature and natural phenomena. For her, nature is an eternal source of inspiration, allowing her to record the impressions she gains through her internalised experience of Škofja Loka’s landscape in a lyrical way. Under the artist’s brush, realistic motifs from her home environment are transformed into an image or vision of a world in which nature is the source of moods and stories: it is also dynamic, spiritual, and aesthetically pleasing; it is by no means mechanical, soulless, and explicable only through rational thinking.

Due to the current Covid 19 restrictions, the opening of the exhibition will be carried out virtually on Wednesday, 26 May 2021, at 6.00 pm, when a presentation video is going to be published on the website and in social media. The exhibition will be on view from 27 May 2021.