Nora Novak creates evocative photo-based paintings that are both highly personal and universal in tone. Employing a variety of media, the canvases contain extracts from the artist’s own life based on an ongoing exploration of her European heritage connected to American Pop-cultural iconography. With a collage sensibility, she presents a strong stylized visual vocabulary incorporating imagery from high fashion, advertising, and idealized female cinematic references.
A subtle undercurrent, seductive at times, celebrates the beauty and strength of the female body, for it is a powerful mode of self expression. Novak’s vision is one of self-empowerment celebrating her independent spirit as a woman and as an artist.
The urban environment with its compacted visual array of advertising, signage and graffiti often provides a “back story” to her art. Layering of images, not unlike torn billboard posters. exhibit fragmented views which offer a multiplicity of readings. However isolated these depictions may seem, they are always unified by vibrant color and an assured, free-flowing expressive painting technique.
Nora states, “My art is a painterly extension of the snapshot, where I can modify, change, and develop additional commentary. I feel this raises the level of ‘first-glance’ perception, where the viewer might be compelled to look longer and share the mood I’ve evoked.”