Reno Passport April 2009 Artist Profile

April Issue 2009 - Reno Passport
by Chag Sorg

The eight bodies of work found on www.rossitza.net are all works hand-inked using markers or brushes, stained into big white paper stretched over backframes. The depictions are in various levels of representation. Some of the oldest drawings rendered are slashed into forms of abstracted shape and indeterminate dimension on big white expanses of paper ground–yeah, they can warp your mind a little if gazed into long enough, and all examples are accomplished with only black ink on paper.
Says Todorova,“I am fascinated by man’s drive to change and adapt his surroundings. I find man’s desire to take charge of his own life visually inspiring,” apparently referring to bridges, overpasses and thoroughfares that stretch travel distances for the nomadic career oriented human commuters.

With a mind let to wander; the paintings could be viewed as sumi brush paintings, a kind of sci-fi robot love story, quasi-mechanical abstractions or medical drawings of muscle tissue but in only tones of gray and usually reminiscent of bridges crossing the landscape and highwayspheres of the high desert.

“In my drawings I try to capture the motion of man in one landscape; the road and the body that created it.” It’s the negative and positive spaces in these pictures that sometimes make the sinewy visual connection for viewers. The whitespace can all-of-the-sudden resemble something concrete or figurative.

The ink slashes are sometimes like shards of obsidian, sometimes more minimal and almost cartoony, and some are painted at wall scale, depictive of land and water. The ambivalent depth can be disorienting, it all melds into shadows or mass.

Using usually grays in light to medium washes and with straight to arced lines and broken perspectives, the newest vistas are accurately rendered representations of Todorova’s commute from Reno to Carson City. All of the pictures have remnants of futurist and cubist works such as that of the early DuChamp paintings.

Todorova’s works have been exhibited throughout the Reno area; including recent solo shows at the Nevada Museum of Art and the Sierra Arts Foundation. In 2005, she earned her B.F.A in Painting/Drawing with minors in Business Marketing and Management from the University of Nevada, Reno. Presently, she works at the Nevada Arts Council as the Community Arts Development Associate.

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