Inka Essenhigh Show Girls 2000 10 color silkscreen w/varnish on Somerset velvet 30" x 26" edition 40

Inka Essenhigh Daedalus and Icarus 2000 10 color silkscreen w/varnish on Somerset velvet 30" x 26" edition 40

Inka Essenhigh "Supernatural" 1999 Oil on canvas 72" x 72"

The artist's "cyborg mutations" are played against fields of glossy, slick enamel as if they were swallowed up or spewn out from a cosmic accident. They have a pop, almost comic book sensibility with a nod to Japanimation and Francis Bacon. The bodies she creates can be grotesque and startling but also poignant, repulsive but beguiling.

"I think about them as being about America: fake, fun, pop, violent, but also quite attractive."

The perfected design of an Essenhigh painting so seemingly resolved in every detail, belies the spontaneity that went into its creation. They are products of a process that combines drawing and painting with a lot of sanding, most pictures begin as a monochromatic color -blood red, icy turquoise, acidic green, -- which provides the ground for subsequent layers of rapid drying enamel-based oil paint. The artist often refers to her canvases as "giant drawings."

A one person show for the artist premiered at Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo, New York in November l999. "Supernatural" was included in the exhibition.

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