Linda Overzee’s frescoes participate in the age-old tradition of fresco mural painting. In Europe following the Greek and Roman through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance up to the Victorian re-Renaissance. Spanning continents from the Ajanta Caves in India to present day Latin-America with it’s Pre-Columbian cultures up to those following Mexican muralists like Diego Rivera and Alfaro Siqueiros.

Today, a fresco isn’t necessarily executed on a wall with ‘buon fresco’ plaster anymore. The artist Bill Viola for instance made Going Forth By Day, a digital fresco in 2002 and very recently Richard Wright won the 2009 Turner Price with his Gold Leaf Fresco.

Overzee’s frescoes are made with traditional materials such as lime and pigments, but they differ from the ancient in that they are portable and project subjects other than the explicit. She doesn’t work on commission for the church, doesn’t decorate Livia’s garden with a vista or a ‘trompe l’oeil’. She’s not rushing to finish ‘a giornata’ but patiently enhances the traces of time with ‘craquelé’ and the suggestion of oxidation and erosion.

Propositions made by the accidental guide her to unknown areas, build up and break down, giornata after giornata. Gradually she takes the reins over from the aleatory and proceeds until she’s convinced to have harvested everything her fresco has to yield.
The ultimate result can be seen as a mirror of ourselves, shaped by circumstance along the way, take or leave, gain or loss, happiness and misfortune, chance and design, sowing and reaping. A painting full of elements in which we can recognize the transitory as well as the eternal, metaphors for the layer upon layer make up of our lives.

This is a contemporary vision of a very long tradition. Suggestive abstract compositions that invite the viewer to provide the storyline.

(Photo: Fraternitas 180 x 210 cm., Detail, © Linda Overzee 2009)

(Photo: Thallo 80x200 cm., Detail, © Linda Overzee 2009)

(Photo: Tellus 180x180 cm., Detail, © Linda Overzee 2009)