For many years now, Tomasko’s oeuvre has been affected by an intensive investigation of dreams, the unconscious and the emotions. Since the end of the 1990s, she created figurative, often melancholic paintings which explored dark spaces or curtained windows with blurriness and an almost baroque handling of light like subtle interiors of the inner. She consistently explored the morning-abandoned bed with its furrows and imprints of nocturnal life. Whereas those works approached their subject by means of the immediate surroundings and the metaphors of the bed and of absence, in recent years the painting of Liliane Tomasko has not only become abstract; the artist has also penetrated to the core and the origin of her pictorial production.
“Deep inside our skulls lies an almond-shape set of neurons that plays a crucial part in the processing of emotions and in our memory. It’s called the amygdala and forms part of the limbic system. Having long been absorbed by a profound interest in all things that are not readily understood, such as ideas surrounding the subconscious, sleep and dreaming, I was fascinated to learn that this small part of our brain lies nestled in darkness, protected from light and outside impact. Our emotional life therefore is processed deep inside ourselves. So are dreams; they are generated whilst we sleep, and in the absence of light. Both contribute greatly to our existence, our presence in the world as human beings, but are equally difficult to understand and make sense of. The paintings and drawings in this show reference the part of ourselves which is not accessible through reason, but follows another logic. One that finds inspiration in the dark corners of ourselves, where the rational cannot reach because the weave is so dense.” (Liliane Tomasko, 2019)
Even today, the wrinkles in an unmade bed are Tomasko’s point of departure and catalyst for her abstract painting. Always at the beginning of the process is the photograph of a bed which, with its tangled and crumpled sheets, determines the physical skeleton of the future picture. Tomasko continues with sketches and a drawing on canvas before she gives wide-ranging space to a free painterly process with acrylic paint and acrylic spray.
