Corda is a young new artist exhibiting for the first time at the Esther Bear Gallery. Her recent paintings and drawings were done in and around Rome and the Italian coast, where she has lived for the past few years with her sculptor husband Jack Zajac. Her work is in direct contrast to her husband’s, which is powerful, masculine and at times brutal. Corda is feminine, poetic, delicate and at times seems to be painting shadows rather than substance.

She creates a strange sense of scale with these illusive figurative paintings which blend into and almost escape into the canvas, rather than dominating it as in the usual figurative work. Her paintings are images (or recalls) of a white-hot picnic on the beach, a crisp ocean breeze, warm sand felt and perhaps not quite seen. Corda works primarily in her studio from remembered scenes or photographs; her paintings are quiet, introspective, contemplative. In her drawings she uses pencil as a medium and explores the possibility of creating line, shadow and dark light with such concentration that she practically turns the pencil into something else. She also uses it to model, build dimension, shadow, depth, substance. “Interior II” is just such a drawing, understated, but strong. “Corfu Beach 11 O’clock” is a gossamer image of emerging forms with the development of linear patterns.

In her large oil painting “Grecian Sea” she modulates the colors to the consistency of atmosphere, bleached blues, greys, greens, and lets the texture of the canvas show through. The figures on the prow of the boat are no more than an embellishment of the surrounding air and the breeze that stirs it.

—Harriette Von Breton