Naples Yellow

About Naples Yellow

This abstract contemporary oil painting has a floral theme featuring the colours pink and blue.

Canadian artist Jennifer Hornyak’s unique aesthetic has produced colourful, evocative, and elegant paintings for more than four decades. Her intimate style has long drawn inspiration from German Expressionism and 20th-century French Fauvism, including the work of Henri Matisse. Yet her distinctive visual language remains resolutely modern, occupying a space between figuration and abstraction.
In recent years, much of her work has explored floral themes; however Hornyak’s flowers transcend mere representation. Her potent imagery is universal--acting instead as metaphors for life. She refers to them as ‘flowerscapes.’
Jennifer Hornyak frequently experiments with acrylics as an underpainting for oil. She works intuitively, selecting colours and building opulent layers of paint to achieve depth, dimension--light and shadow and a sensuous texture that transforms the visual experience into a tactile one.
Naples Yellow reflects the inspired palette Hornyak is known for. As is characteristic of her practice, the composition—a sky bright yellow vase of ‘flowers’ is enlivened by a mix of light and dark hues: expressive brushstrokes of red, yellow, greens, and dark blue play against the deep blue background and propels the work into a contemporary realm.

“Regardless of my intentions, the final shape of each flowerpot is a direct reflection of my mood. The objects may be the same, but how I paint them entirely depends on how I feel about the world that day. ” Jennifer Hornyak

“Her appeal to the unconscious was impressionistic like an invitation to the garden of the soul.” Bernard Théoret, Art Reviewer

FRAMED
18.75 × 15.75 in 47.63 × 40.01 cm

Jennifer Hornyak studied at the Grimsby School of Art in England. In 1961, she moved to Montreal where she attended McGill University, the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal and the Centre Saidye Bronfman. Hornyak has exhibited throughout North America and Europe including the Paris World Exhibition in 1987 where her work was shown alongside that of Modigliani, Picasso and van Dongen. Jennifer Hornyak’s work is represented in many private and corporate collections including Bombardier Transport, Burroughs Wellcome, McCarthy Tétrault, Power Corporation and Hyatt Regency Hotel. She still works and lives in Montreal.