ArtTalk – Csilla Sadloch

Known for her large-scale graphite drawings of plant matter, Csilla Sadloch’s detailed renderings of meandering vines and curled bark are striking. They are meticulous and extraordinarily realistic. The subject matter is inspired by her walks in woods, where the details of nature capture her sharply-focused gaze. She calls it “hyper examination.” The result is a realism taken to such an extreme that it becomes an abstraction.

Csilla Sadloch is an award-winning artist whose works on paper and paintings have appeared in a multitude of solo shows—including at the Woodmere Art Museum—and group shows both regionally and nationally. Sadloch has the distinguished honor of having won the Patron Award on three occasions for the juried Phillips’ Mill Art Show. She’s been reviewed in publications including the Philadelphia Inquirer, Architectural Digest, Princeton US1, and the Washington Post, to name a few.

Andrew Mangravite of BroadStreetReview.com wrote, “Csilla Sadloch has a way with a line. Everything looks as though it’s been pre-planned and has existed from eternity. Her studies of birds embedded in foliage look like illustrations for a book of poems yet to be written, and her paintings of people endow the almost snapshot-like images with a mysterious quality.

In her own words: “Since I walk often in the woods, I am confronted regularly with massive, upended roots, fissured, furrowed tree barks, quirky burls. Perhaps because of boredom or reverie, gnarly shapes grab my attention and incite my curiosity. Through editing, focusing on form, changing scale and by repetitious mark-making, I create, in my mind, abstracted vignettes, derived from the natural but reconstructed into somewhat ambiguous  arrangements.”