Maja Ruznic

Maja Ruznic “Dead Rabbit For The Brotherhood” – ink and gouache on paper, 35x45in, 2014

Ink on paper is not forgiving. Maja Ruznic totally embraced this quality after working with oil paint. As she explains: “Because I can’t edit I’m forced to be more honest, because for me the first gesture, that first instinctual action is often the most authentic.”

Maja Ruznic “Self Portrait as Scared Creature”- ink on paper, 8inx6in, 2013

I first learned about Maja Ruznic while browsing the fantastic website ‘In the Make‘ featuring US West Coast visual artists. Maja’s interview and video at her studio are compelling: at age 9 she fled Bosnia with her mother when the war broke out. After spending some years at refugee camps in Germany and Austria they finally ended up in the United States. In her own words: “There was a great sense of chaos and unrest during that time which has informed a lot of what I am curious about, and certainly created a need to record as a way of holding on to experiences.” She now lives and works in Los Angeles.

Maja Ruznic “Baba Roga III” – ink on paper, 13x17in, 2013

They are not pretty. The characters born from the convergence of her memory, imagination, and daily observations are often misshapen and wide-eyed, staring at nothing in particular. Maja Ruznic’s haunting portraits do not fade easily in your mind.

Maja Ruznic “Decisions” – 12inx12in, ink and acrylic on paper, 2013

I was touched by what she says about the influence of her mother on her art-making: “My mother believed in the creative spirit and urged me to draw, paint and write, no matter how poor we were. When I was very young, before I could even read, I would play with her books and pretend that I knew how to read and make illustrations in the margins of what I thought the book was about. She never once scolded me for marking up her books, and that carried and continues to carry significance for me.

Maja Ruznic “You Left Me Feeling Like A Teabag” – ink on paper, 11inx15in, 2013

Check out her website for more!

Paul Klee’s oil-transfer drawings

“Colour possesses me. I don’t have to pursue it. It will possess me always, I know it. That is the meaning of this happy hour: colour and I are one. I am a painter.”
Paul Klee, 1914

Christian Sectarian – Paul Klee, 1920, 4. Oil-transfer drawing and watercolour on paper on board. The Museum of Modern Art, NY.

Paul Klee (1879-1940) is one of my all time favourite artists. His delicate use of colour always gets me. I couldn’t make it to the exhibition “Paul Klee: making visible” at Tate Modern in spring but I enjoyed the excellent researched catalogue from a to z!

In the Wilderness – Paul Klee, 1921, 22. Oil-transfer drawing and watercolour on paper on cardboard. Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern.

Klee began to exhibit a little over a hundred years ago in his hometown Bern (Switserland). For a long time he was not very successful, he performed as a violinist and he taught art students for over a decade. At the heart of his career lays a sustained involvement with the Bauhaus, the hothouse for the creative revolution of the twentieth century in Europe.

Room Perspective with Inhabitants – Paul Klee, 1921, 24. Oil-transfer drawing and watercolour on paper on cardboard. Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern.

Colleagues of Klee recalled his studio as ‘carefully ordered confusion’. Klee established an environment in which to work on several pieces simultaneously which allowed him to produce watercolours, drawings and oil paintings at the same time and in generous quantities. He kept track of his output in his ‘oeuvre catalogue’ of completed works which he maintained for over thirty years. Each work is given a code which he inscribes on virtually every work on paper. For example, 1921/24 on ‘Room Perspective with inhabitants’ above announces that it is the 24th completed work in 1921.

The Twittering Machine – Paul Klee, 1922, 151. Oil-transfer drawing and watercolour on paper on cardboard. The Museum of Modern Art, NY.

Klee was inventive in many ways. Just as he made his own tools and brushes, so he developed his own techniques. For example his ‘oil-transfer’ of which all drawings shown in this post are examples. His ‘oil-transfer’ was essentially a home-made tracing system. A sheet of paper coated with black oil paint was, when dry to the touch, laid face down on what would be the host sheet for the image. On top of both was placed a drawing, the lines of which were retraced with an etching needle so as to press the oil paint onto the bottom sheet. The atmosphere of these ‘oil-transfer’ drawings is enhanced by the smudges of black paint pressed through by the drawing hand and which provides a resist to the superimposed coloured washes.

Ghost of a Genius – Paul Klee, 1922, 10. Oil-transfer drawing and watercolour on paper on card. Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh.

Paul Klee stated: ‘Art does not reproduce the visible, rather, it makes visible’. And that might well be the reason why i simply can’t stop looking at his fascinating work.

All pictures shown are scans from the catalogue ‘Paul Klee: making visible’, 2013, Tate Publishing.