Due to her own personal struggle with stuttering, Lana Combrinck, one of the top artists of the 2016 Phatshoane Henney New Breed Art Competition, often illustrates themes around dialogue and interaction between communicators in her arresting artworks.
This year the 28 year old Lana Combrinck obtained her Master’s Degree in Fine Arts at the University of the Free State, of which the highlight was a Master’s exhibition of 12 works, entitled ‘Embodied imagination’. The exhibition showcased her specialisation in painting and photography, which she especially loves because of the “contrast between painting’s texture and paint marks - as well as the long and very physical process of painting, and photography’s almost flat, screen-like texture and the total absence of evidence revealing the artist’s physical process in making this art”.
“I often place these two media in dialogue by exploring the painting-like qualities of photography and the photographical qualities of painting,” she reflects.
This same fascination with these two very different art forms is demonstrated in her multimedia artwork entered into last year’s Phatshoane Henney New Breed Art Competition, entitled Mimiek[-]Kunstenaar (directly translated as Mime[-]Artist) – consisting of six separate canvases. A combination of performance art, photorealism and photo collage, each canvas consists of various photographic and painted layers illustrating interrupted movement – creating a blurry effect. “The resultant use of these rather unclear, distorted images serves as, among others, a reflection on modern mediums of communication such as cell phones, and its shortcomings, such as a signal breaking up, running out of airtime, etc. It also creates disruption in the flow of dialogue. The dialogue becomes blurry, unclear and distorted too, much like the blurry images.”
At the moment she is working on several artworks simultaneously. To ensure that she makes her mark in the art world, she tries to participate in as many exhibitions and art competitions as possible. Most notable is one of her Masters’ works being chosen as one of the top 100 artworks in South Africa that’s soon to be exhibited in the Pretoria Art Museum at the end of August. In addition one of her other works was included in a group exhibition exhibited during the recent Grahamstad National Art Festival, and another is to form part of a group exhibition in the Liebrecht Gallery in Somerset-West opening mid-September. In the meantime she is hard at work preparing several artworks for entry into the Thami Mnyele art competition, the 2017 Phatshoane Henney New Breed Art Competition and the PPC Imaginarium competition respectively.
“Last year’s New Breed Art Competition afforded me much exposure and experience. The fact that Phatshoane Henney Attorneys purchased my entered work to form part of their permanent corporate art collection, especially means a lot for my artistic career. I also had the chance to create art blocks on commission for Phatshoane Henney Attorneys’ office décor. Therefore it goes without saying that the New Breed Art Competition opened doors for me and created various opportunities for me to build my career in the arts,” she concludes.
Click here to visit her full profile and for more information on her competition entry.