Like the masters of the early renaissance, Jana Brike creates her paintings layer by layer but using 21st century technology. She makes use of the synthetic properties of digital photography and 3D computer programs as an instrument for her works. She combines these with a fine and precise drawing in graphite, colored pencil, ballpoint pen, highlighter and brushwork painting using oil, tempera, gouache and spray paints. This is Jana Brike’s toolbox of methods for capturing in the painting the final point of collision of contrasts in both the material and the image as artificial – natural, living – dead, beautiful – unpleasant, attractive – repellent and so on. Jana Brike uses these visual techniques to construct compositions and narrative scenarios, which she does not impose on the viewer but speaks about them discreetly in modestly sized and small paintings
