There’s something irresistably touching in a child’s genuine amazement and total vulnerability before the world. We recognise it because we all have it within us from the beginning. During the life long process of socialising our true inner world is being pushed ever farther and deeper inside, away from other’s glances. The pain and the disappointment that are associated with it stay with us all life long and make us unsure. It’s only after we’ve come across vulnerability among others, most often among children that we get to meet ourselves and for a short moment, we find salvation.
Marina Stenby’s artistry produces this timely meeting with ourselves. Her cardboard cut-out dolls and animals, her acrylic portraits that look like illustrations in children’s books and her subtle watercolours, all of them possess this genuine, fearless, open, vulnerable and honest look that we’ve once lost. This look shines through the strictly sterilised, polished and almost design look alike form that Stenby has perfected.
With her painting Stenby takes her own place in the long tradition of sheer form that is derived from the mannerism of late Renaissance and continues through Modigliani onto today’s stars such as Francesco Clelmente. Within sculpture Stenby’s technique of cut-out dolls that comprises a complicated and time consuming process with several layers of wet paper and gypsum, has led her to a form that could easily be mistaken for a glossy design object unless it didn’t have the disarming look that exposes the essence in itself in Stenby’s whole artistry.