Two Bound Angels on the Beach 2019

Jana Brike painted "Two Bound Angels on the Beach" with a palette of soft blues, pinks, and creams, building a tender narrative. You can see a painterly process with the underdrawing of wings on the boy's back and the tears on the girl’s face. I imagine Brike feeling that it might be too easy or sentimental to make everything polished. Sometimes the sketch or the idea is more charged than the finished thing, right? The image comes into being through the layering of paint, a push-and-pull between intention and accident. The surface has a smooth quality, which almost feels naive, belying the sophisticated composition. The braid that binds the two figures together is such a simple yet emotionally resonant gesture, as if binding two souls together. I see echoes of Paula Rego’s storytelling and the dreamlike symbolism of Frida Kahlo, artists who weren't afraid to depict vulnerable emotional states. Like them, Brike engages in an ongoing dialogue with art history, reimagining and reinterpreting themes of love, loss, and connection. This creates space for multiple interpretations and meanings.