Girl Blown Away 2017

Jana Brike made this painting, Girl Blown Away, with oil on canvas, and at first glance, it’s like a Pre-Raphaelite dream with a melancholic twist, where the process feels almost classical, yet it's disrupted by this contemporary sensibility. The surface is smooth, almost porcelain-like, but then you notice these rogue marks, these petals that seem to float but also cling, like a second skin. Look at the way the pink petals scatter across her body and hair; they're not just decorative, they feel like they're obscuring, fragmenting her, and that one scrape on her knee, so pink and sore. It's a detail that grounds the painting in a reality that's both tender and unsettling. I'm reminded of Francesca Woodman, not in terms of style, but in the way both artists use the body as a site of transformation, a canvas for exploring vulnerability and strength. Art like this reminds us that beauty and pain can coexist, that a painting can be both an escape and a confrontation.