Woman Standing

About Woman Standing

This contemporary figurative oil painting rendered in teal blue is by Jennifer Hornyak.

In her superb figurative artwork, Canadian artist Jennifer Hornyak has spoken of wanting to capture a certain "pathos and frailty which exists in the human condition." Her portraits appear to suggest a profound sense of human solitude.
For more than four decades her unique aesthetic has produced colourful, evocative, and elegant paintings. Her intimate style has long drawn inspiration from German Expressionism and 20th-century French Fauvism, including the work of Henri Matisse evident here. Yet her distinctive visual language remains resolutely modern, occupying a space between figuration and abstraction.
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.
Woman Standing is a haunting portrait—the silhouette of a woman standing in hat and coat, hands in pockets. It is rendered in a rich teal colour—the woman’s form distinguished only by a black outline set against the same teal blue of the background. The monochromatic hues of this piece underscore its emotional appeal.

“My figurative work is inspired by actual people I have seen but they are in fact a compilation of people I have watched. They emerge from the canvas. It has to do with colour and movement. It is not something I make happen. I wait for them to come.” Jennifer Hornyak

FRAMED
16.5 × 12.5 in 41.91 × 31.75 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.