Additional Images

Provenance:

Courtesy of the artist; Simon Bentley Fine Art, Toronto.

The Work & Artist Bio

Runaway, 2022, Natalka Husar’s intimate painting of a young girl and her dog, was made at the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian War in 2022 when the media was flooded with images of displaced women fleeing for their lives and whatever they loved and could carry with them. The medium is acrylic and Husar uses the burns, ruptures and scars on the wooden surface to intensify the feeling of fear and vulnerability on the face of the young woman. But there is hope, too; her eyes and the white fur on the dog’s muzzle are a symbol of the kind of unbreakable bond that will resist all the damage we inflict on one another.

Natalka Husar was born in 1951 in New Jersey to Ukrainian Displaced persons. She graduated from Rutgers University in 1973, and that same year moved to Toronto where she lives and works. Over her five-decade career Husar has exhibited widely across Canada. Her most recent exhibition, “Soaking Wet and On Fire,” 2023, was at the Gardiner Museum in Toronto. She has had exhibitions across Canada, including at the McMaster Museum of Art, Hamilton; the Art Gallery of Guelph; Museum London; the MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina; the Winnipeg Art Gallery; Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton; Tom Thomson Memorial Art Gallery, Owen Sound and numerous others. In most cases the solo exhibitions were accompanied by extensive catalogues, many meticulously designed by the artist, the result being an artist’s bookwork. Her paintings are in the collection of Canada’s major galleries including the National Gallery of Canada; the Art Gallery of Ontario; the Winnipeg Art Gallery; the Art Gallery of Alberta; the Art Gallery of Hamilton; the Beaverbrook Art Gallery; the MacKenzie Art Gallery; the Glenbow Museum and many others. Her 2023 exhibition at the Gardiner Museum, featuring ceramics from 1977 alongside a recent painting, attest to her lifelong commitment to reveal the scars and collisions of displacement. Runaway, which the artist has donated to the Border Crossings auction is the protagonist from her long-standing cast of “Chernobyl Girls,” painted in 2022 at the outset of the present war in Ukraine, it is a portrait of companionship and loyalty in the tale of struggle and survival. The artist is represented in Canada by Simon Bentley Fine Art, Toronto.

Fire and Water, Clay and Paint, Border Crossings Issue 163, 2023

Simmering History: The Recent Paintings of Natalka Husar, Border Crossings Issue 139, 2016

Natalka Husar: The Implication of Painting, Border Crossings Issue 111, 2009

Simon Bentley Fine Art