Page 88 - Steppe - Aigana Gali

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Process
I t is a process that allows her to express, with particular force, the character of the steppe and its resistance to permanence, order, and ownership.
Sweeping thin veils of watery colour with wide brushes across a canvas on the floor, the artist finds her way into a memory of the vast open plains, flooded with light, constantly shifting in tones. Layered in a succession of pigments and washes, they resemble monumental water colours, and call to mind the soak stain fluidity of Helen Frankenthaler’s paintings and Turner’s moody landscapes. Completing the work with her finger tips, as if moving through a dust storm, or a cloud, she invites the viewer into a moment of reckoning with the unknown.
This is the spark that ignites her process, “sometimes it's a vibrational thing, others it’s a particular colour, a pale shimmer of gold for example. When it’s about vibration I always want to dance, and when I dance I get into an unconscious kind of working mode.” In her studio, the artist creates the conditions in which these visions and memories can manifest. Like a seeker, fasting in the desert, she deprives herself of everything so that she can be alone with that which she is bringing forth.
“It is a shamanic action - not ritualistic (because in a ritual you expect a cause and eect). I need to come completely empty to the studio, and when I start it is like feeling through the dark waiting for something to happen. I close my eyes and glimpse things - like the orange flash of a fox’s tail as it vanishes at the corner of my eye - and with my brush I can grasp it, catch her tail and follow her to unravel a kind of mystery. These visions are my invitation to work.”