Nature, Flowers, and Portraiture: The Art of Liba Labik
Everything Changes I, oil, mixed media on canvas
Liba Labik is a Czech-born artist who currently works between the Czech Republic, Alberta, and British Columbia. The artist’s current portfolio is packed with deeply saturated, partially abstracted paintings that use nature, flowers, and portraiture as motifs.
Time of Berries I, oil, mixed media on canvas
I really enjoy the overall atmosphere that’s created by Liba’s artworks. There’s almost a sense of decay, looking at these pieces, reminiscent in some ways of the work of Nicola Samori. Liba’s heavy texturing and allowance for bleeding of pigment on the canvas, combined with the bluish, subdued tones of the artist’s colour palette lends to an almost ominous sense in some of these works, as if one is looking at a beautiful flower that they know to be deadly poisonous.
It’s interesting to see how the artist is able to combine these more abstracted aesthetics with detailed, realistic portraiture. In Liba’s Metanoia gallery, beautiful feminine faces, sketched in black and white, are framed with cool-coloured floral elements and abstract brush marks, lending to a dreamlike, fantasy atmosphere.
