logs between the artist and her
thoughts, her experiences, visions
and memories. The beautiful har-
monies of nature, splashes from
the fountain, a sudden gust of
wind, branches of the tree, or
snow flakes in suspended animation are all reflected in her paintings
with balanced forms and color relationships.
town. Her work betrays the temperance of small Russian towns, sharing
the tableaus of fellow Russian Chagall--color drenched, small towns
rich in folklore and regional beauty. Many of Ta's works are located
in private collections throughout Russia, Europe and the U.S., and she
stunning beauty of these colorist diaries of nature in all its splendor
and varying moods--drag ugliness as well as beauty--are powerful
and edifying. Man and animal, caught in attempts at finding a place
in nature's embrace, is a recurring theme that speaks to the yin and
yang of the inanimate and living, the breathing, and that in nature still.
Barbanakova's ability to frame and juxtapose these cohabitants of the
beauty and a mystical reckoning of
our place within it. A view outside
a window, across a sill and onto a
city, becomes a multilayered, emo-
tional vision of personal longing and
societal relations. The mystical Rara
Avis (meaning loosely a "rare, unique
sophistication, alone in nature, going about its business and yet hyper-
aware of its place not only in nature but in the painting itself, staring out
at the viewer, questioning its role in the cosmos, and our relationship to
it. -Douglas Singleton