Time Travelers 2017

Jana Brike painted this dreamy image with oils, and it’s like stepping into a memory, or maybe a half-forgotten fairy tale. The way Brike handles the paint, it's smooth, almost like porcelain, giving everything this surreal, untouchable quality. I'm really drawn to the light here – how it catches the girls' faces and clothes, it's really soft and luminous, like a Vermeer. But then, look at that sky, all streaky and turbulent, that contrast makes the painting feel like it is vibrating. I'm really interested in how Brike's work pulls from the past, those Pre-Raphaelite painters come to mind, but she's doing something totally her own with it. Brike makes paintings that are all at once beautiful and unsettling, familiar and totally strange. You know, art doesn't have to spell everything out, and sometimes the questions are more interesting than the answers anyway.