Sonia Gechtoff's Perception Of Beauty

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Cliche as it may be, this maxim holds true throughout the world, whether it be in regards to celebrities, cars, rural lanscapes, gritty cityscapes, your co-worker’s children, or your father-in-law’s turkey carving skills. Holding differing points of view in regards to what is considered beauty is something that humanity has argued over for centuries. What one sees as merely a rundown subway car, another may see the small sparks of creativity in the walls’ grafitti, the colorful bursts of commuters’ clothing, the sheer beauty of humanity itself in the hidden spaces of the train. Discussions over what is truly beautiful are common throughout humanity’s history, though nowhere are they as obvious or as well documented as they are in the art world.
Sonia Gechtoff is known for her abstract expressionist painitings and drawings, a genre that, for many, you either love or hate. For me, it’s works like hers that allow me to enjoy a style of paininting that I’m not otherwise drawn to. Though I enjoy her work, her paintings may not be considered beautiful in the traditional sense by many.

Using such a largge canvas gave her room to lay out a background of solid black dotted with small streaks of white, without making the outward reaching tangle of colors in the center feel too claustrophobic. Instead,the size givs it a sense of distance, as if we’re watching an explosion from a ways away, rather than being caught up in the middle of a blazing firestorm; close enough for it to feel personal, but not enough to be threatening. And her choice of oil lends itself as well - such a frantic sense of movement wouldnt have been as well articulated through something like watercolor. Oil paints have a sense of weight and depth to them rthat lets Etya seem to have a depth to it, despite being an abstract painting with no true figures within to give a sense of three dimesionality