Goodbye, Eden 

Curator: Jana Brike's oil painting, "Goodbye, Eden", presents a scene of melancholic beauty, a departure from innocence perhaps? Editor: It's intensely tactile, even unsettling. The water looks cold and heavy, weighing down that delicate dress. I want to know what kind of oil paints Brike used to get that shimmer. Curator: The shimmer evokes those tiny lights hovering near the surface; fireflies, symbols of ephemeral beauty and childhood wonder, scattered around her like fallen stars. There’s a hint of Romanticism here, a yearning for something lost, mixed with Surrealist fantasy. Editor: I'm struck by the garment she is wearing. What about its production? That lace-trimmed slip, the fabric clinging with moisture - it's mass produced today but how do its stylistic elements hearken to a pre-industrial nostalgia in her mind and technique? Curator: Consider the gesture, though - the slight lifting of the dress. It feels both innocent and subtly performative, as if aware of being observed, a disruption of pure naivete. That action is both about modesty and a statement of what is left behind...the paradise itself? Editor: And that stick...such an everyday, unadorned thing clutched in those well manicured hands. There's an almost peasant quality there in that found object combined with an uncanny beauty. What did she do with it afterwards? I bet it became part of another process. Curator: Indeed. One feels Brike's concern with capturing liminal states: the transition between childhood and adulthood, dream and reality. It resonates with pre-Raphaelite painters, who captured figures in literary and often allegorical moments of great consequence, each prop meticulously laden with meaning. Editor: The nail polish on the young girl gives her agency and reveals something of consumption in today's society; a stark difference to those pre-Raphaelite references. I agree with you that Brike reveals more than idyllic allegories through careful combinations and contrasts, which, for me, highlights a certain social alienation of that 'paradise' and perhaps a sense of power with the stick/staff she now carries. Curator: It's a disquieting image, isn't it? Far from an embrace, it leaves the viewer questioning what we gain and what we forfeit in our inevitable departures. Editor: Yes, it reminds me that beauty can be made anywhere - with mass produced lace or just found in a forest. And perhaps both offer only illusions to be interpreted through her surrealist painting.