Paisajes -- Landscapes - Rygaard, Maya

Maya Rygaard
“Four Seasons”
A reflection of natural Scandinavia
Seeing is the eye’s reason, but not its function.
Reading is the eye’s function, but not its movement.
Perceiving is the eye’s movement, but not its power.
Illuminating is the eye’s power, but not its attribute.
Absence, void of images, in a timeless state, is the eye’s attribute
and its virtual defeat.
The pictorial suite by Swedish artist Maya Rygaard explores
the firm cultural importance of the Scandinavian landscape.
Landscape painting began to gain a special significance at the
beginning of the 1900-century.
Legendary painters such as Edward Munch, Vilhelm Hammershöi,
Carl Larsson and Akseli Gallen-Kallela were the front figures of
the strong Scandinavian tradition of landscape art.
At the end of 1900-century landscape painting became more
subjective in its artistic form and content. We can observe
more metaphorical and personal interpretations of landscapes,
interacting with the artist’s emotional status and mood changes,
manifested trough intensity or the choice of pallet at any given
moment.
Maya Rygaard proceeds further along the classical, romantic
path forged by the Nordic tradition in landscape art. She
explores and experiments, shifting from romantic classical
landscapes towards the more abstract. Her monumental, solemn
works are influenced by solitude and melancholy, while directly
reflecting the natural itself of north-central Sweden.
Her works with their powerful psychological aura are
influenced by themes and colours of the four seasons. The solid
cold, long Swedish winters, for instance, with its dark pallet,
near blacks, that introduce us to solitary places and isolation
abandoned in eternal shadows, places that spiritually imprison
by driving us further to contemplate countless existential issues
about our times.
Maya Rygaard’s artistry includes a search for and an
investigation into the different physical and metaphysical states
of the Scandinavian landscape, a search for hidden magical
moments where light and darkness play profound role in the
creation and formation of each chosen scenery and where
nature’s elements bear upon the living.
In the suite “The Four Seasons” we see a playful mind of the
artist depicting her different moods, shifted by impressions
during her various trips trough Sweden, Finland and Norway.
We observe instances of loneliness, melancholy, warmth and
coldness and still with distinct poetic but subtly dramatic features.
Maya Rygaard’s work searches for rendering enlightenment
upon small connections and fragments which link northern
romanticism and modern abstraction. She was inspired by
essayist Robert Rosenbaum, who recognized the seeds of
modern abstract art in the romantic landscape painting of
the 1900-century, an idea he expressed in his influential essay
“Modern Painting and the Northern Romantic Tradition:
Friedrich to Rothko”.