We have just added a new series of art in print by TWFineArt's Julika Lackner. This series is a gorgeous abstract representation of the American landscape in locations like Yellowstone National Park. Like the impressionists, Lackner captures moments of light and color. What she sees around her is depicted in layers of horizontal bands that reference the horizons of landscape. Like layers of sediment, the bands pile on top of each other to create complex abstract visions of the environments around her. Visit Juilka's PORTFOLIO to view the full collection. [caption id="attachment_9827" align="alignleft" width="356"] Color Bands - Yellowstone, 2014. Print by Julika Lackner[/caption] [caption id="attachment_9828" align="alignleft" width="357"] Color Bands - Yellowstone Light, 2014. Print by Julika Lackner[/caption]

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EXCERPT FROM ART LTD MAGAZINE [divider] Julika Lackner: "Major New Works" at Alex Mertens Fine Art  by charles donelan Jan 2014 Spectral Phase #4 2013 Acrylic, Oil + Alum-Silver on Canvas 96" x 72" Photo: courtesy Alex Mertens Fine Art Occasionally a young painter makes a quantum leap forward to a new level, and this seems to be the case with Julika Lackner, as evidenced by a fine and comprehensive exhibition this fall at Alex Mertens Fine Art, in Montecito, just outside of Santa Barbara. Lackner was raised and educated partly in Santa Barbara, partly in Berlin, and the balance she's achieved between the representational rigor and psychological tension of the Northern European tradition and the sun-soaked pleasure principle of Southern California makes her work both viscerally and intellectually engaging. Her new tack, which, to be fair, has been underway for at least three years, involves a shift from representation to abstraction--from standing apart from the scenes she paints to a kind of merging with the atmosphere. The self-assured elegance and power of this change was made possible by long hours of research and practice painting representational light situations, from lively night skies to lurid urban lightshows to aerial views semi-obscured by gauzy clouds. The new series of works, which are titled Spectral Phase numbered 1-8, were painted in 2013; they follow other, large immersive canvases from the years 2011 and 2012 with names like Daybreak and True North. They combine great washes of saturated acrylic color with reflective aluminum surfaces and fields of geometrically arranged brushstrokes in the ovoid shape of small lozenges, or, as critic Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe has termed them, "boats." Their overall impact lands somewhere between Mark Rothko and the avant-garde cinema of Stan Brakhage. The term "boats" derives from the look of Lackner's 2008 series of representational aerial views of Los Angeles, and in particular from an image of Marina del Rey, called From Above, that depicts actual boats. However, in her new paintings, these floating signifiers have shipped anchor and begun to move through a new element that's part air, part water, and all visual sensation. Their presence in the midst of Lackner's masterful control of adjacent color values and reflective surface effects makes these paintings a persuasive contribution to the ever-shifting tradition of contemporary art in California, and beyond.

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