Đuro Vanđura

NADA ŽILJAK'S EMBRACES

Love begins in the eye, in the flashing lightning's spark that continues to flicker merrily in the direction of the one who had induced it. The mirror of love is in the eye. If a good look is taken and love is detected in the eye, it is first manifested and followed by a touch. It is a compulsory touch, without precise aim or direction, just a spontaneous touching of the arm, hair, back, whatever; with the only aim being to direct the flash and transform it into the warmth of a caress. A mother caresses her child, a lover his loved one, and all have the right to purr with pleasure like a cat in a warm lap. With this gesture – a touch, love ceases being a one-way path. Feelings are mutual for the one who is extending his hand as well as for the one who is receiving the warmth of the touch.

An embrace coming from the feeling of love is everything that matters in this world. Between intertwined arms and bodies melting into one there seems to be the intertwining of souls, warmth and their merging. An embrace is the wish to make two people become one, to make one unique, whole and inseparable love from two bodies. There still remains the kiss, but we first must come to the end of this description. Or maybe a new chapter should be begun.

Nada Žiljak does not paint pictures that are a window looking into the world outside. Curtains and blinds do not mean a thing to her because she will not show us parks nor streets. Her pictures are the world, her personal one and her intimate account of her delicacy of feeling, spirituality and experiencing quality. Her pictures are her own way of viewing the world, creating special atmosphere, individual associations and connotations. It is a world of only her own states of peace, her states of rapture, contentment, warmth and love. In Nada's colors embraces are firstly states and ambient of love, but in a wide range of appearance and refined nuances of meaning. The fatherly embrace is a sign of authority, but also of the protector's dependability. A friendly embrace is pure joy and happiness. A partner's embrace offers warmth and lulls one into safety, and a lover's embrace brings fine nuances of lust. There is much more standing between the touch and the encounters of various types of beauty, pleasure, trust and inspiration.

The rhythm of experiencing pictures of love, touching and embraces is in coordination with the rhythm of creating and it is normal that it returns back in an identical manner. The paths of carrying out ideas along the same paths of theme and motive lead to their comprehension and new experiencing. Nada Žiljak builds her painter worlds in sequences of plan-parallel planes. The element closest at hand – the background - is the farthest away from the eye. We interpret it almost always as monochrome yellow, orange, blue or pinkish, although it is built in lazurre overlapping of a whole range of neighboring colorist values. The impression of a monochrome quality will remain even after the refined nuances are covered over by some yellows coming from the lower lots into the upper angle blue hues.

The second plane is centered at the middle of the painting foundation as determining the space where the characters and motives will act. In most cases it is darker in its structural appearance than the background and thus it is closer to the viewer in its visual colorist perspective. The palette seldom changes in this plane as to quality, only the colors are clearer, more distinct and often darker. Pale ochres from the background, for instance, are dispersed here from the same colorist scale in different yellow tones and nuances, all the way to brown contours, hazes and depths. The handwriting is more sparkling here. The brush leaves clear traces in spots and color particulars, and the impastos and tones have been changed for the breeziness of azures. Nothing else needs to be said here, nor is more precise reading necessary. There is no need to notice here a rock, a meadow, a room, beach or table, and if by chance we meet a cat somewhere, we shall always remain in an eternal artistic ambivalent state. The question arises: does it belong to this plane or the painting's first plane?

The first plane is an upper painter's layer with characters, figures and their encounters and contacts. All the different space and atmosphere have been painted for them, for their mise-en-scene, positions, sitting, moving, lying or floating. There is nothing that separates them in painting structures. Contours are born from the space conglomerate, and they stand out with their elegant, slender elongated shape quality, and in some detail dithers of the grey powder-like color they once again merge into the entirety of their own, newly established world. It seems that Nada puts a full stop at the end. The stressed volume of a shoulder, the detail of a finger or palette are a dotted color tones, and in the relief mass it seems one could almost touch them.

Nada Žiljak's embraces are entire worlds made of love, touching and embracing. Everything is the same, whether we start observing what is in the picture or what has been painted. Maybe the rhythm that is usual in life is the one where one begins from love that after touching turns into an embrace, but the impressions are constant as to the feelings of great delight when pictures do not necessarily begin with a touch, but end with it. And it is then that a new spark flashes in some eye.