Silvana Waniuk
Silvana Waniuk was born in Germany, and raised in Israel, she spent her formative years in a village by the Mediterranean. From an early age, Silvana was fascinated by art, however since there were no art classes at her local school, she was advised to study music and would later make a living as a classical guitarist.
After joining the spiritual association of Subud in 1970, her involvement with art intensified.
Silvana immigrated to Canada in 1977 where circumstances demanded a change of focus from music and painting to weaving. She returned to painting in 1986 and has been working steadily in that medium ever since.
By and large Silvana is a self-taught artist. About the process of her work Silvana says: “I strive for meaningful content. Thus, each painting embodies a tentative answer to a particular enquiry. The range of my interests is eclectic, corresponding to the continuous flux of life. Probing the deeper meaning of certain stories in the Hebrew Bible; questioning the nature of creativity and art; highlighting unique states of awareness or expressing stages in one’s endless search for identity.
Artist Statement: My non-figurative, symbolic, language is informed by music and harks back to Modernism and Abstract Expressionism. It is a fitting tool with which to evoke the inner nature of things. My work uses form and colour to depict spiritual and psychological realities, personal and universal.
I work exclusively with heavy body acrylics and pallet knives. Each painting is the product of a lengthy process involving multiple layers that add texture and depth which ultimately, like a reverse archeological dig, invest the image with new understanding and closure.
“In its preliminary stage, the ‘answer’ to a question emerges as a thumbnail drawing, which when transferred to the canvas becomes the blueprint for the work to be built upon. The work proceeds in a succession of variations. I like to compare the process to stages in a person’s life from infancy to maturity; a lengthy procedure demanding patience and trust. The end result, which can never be foreseen, appearing as a miraculous sum total of the whole journey. “
More about Silvana Waniuk can be found in her memoir Beyond the Breakers, A Subud Odyssey, available on Amazon
After joining the spiritual association of Subud in 1970, her involvement with art intensified.
Silvana immigrated to Canada in 1977 where circumstances demanded a change of focus from music and painting to weaving. She returned to painting in 1986 and has been working steadily in that medium ever since.
By and large Silvana is a self-taught artist. About the process of her work Silvana says: “I strive for meaningful content. Thus, each painting embodies a tentative answer to a particular enquiry. The range of my interests is eclectic, corresponding to the continuous flux of life. Probing the deeper meaning of certain stories in the Hebrew Bible; questioning the nature of creativity and art; highlighting unique states of awareness or expressing stages in one’s endless search for identity.
Artist Statement: My non-figurative, symbolic, language is informed by music and harks back to Modernism and Abstract Expressionism. It is a fitting tool with which to evoke the inner nature of things. My work uses form and colour to depict spiritual and psychological realities, personal and universal.
I work exclusively with heavy body acrylics and pallet knives. Each painting is the product of a lengthy process involving multiple layers that add texture and depth which ultimately, like a reverse archeological dig, invest the image with new understanding and closure.
“In its preliminary stage, the ‘answer’ to a question emerges as a thumbnail drawing, which when transferred to the canvas becomes the blueprint for the work to be built upon. The work proceeds in a succession of variations. I like to compare the process to stages in a person’s life from infancy to maturity; a lengthy procedure demanding patience and trust. The end result, which can never be foreseen, appearing as a miraculous sum total of the whole journey. “
More about Silvana Waniuk can be found in her memoir Beyond the Breakers, A Subud Odyssey, available on Amazon
Works Available for Purchase At: Propeller Online Shop
