Stella Effercio is a continuation of the Stella Imber series, exhibited at Salian Art Space in Bandung in 2014. Interpreted from Latin, ‘Stella Imber’ translates as ‘Showering Stars’, and relates to a magical childhood spent on the Southern Coast of Australia.
As a child Sutardy lived to be outside looking up at the stars, wondering, and then dreaming of the mysteries and knowledge held within the mind of the universe. The stars seemed like a roof, or protective annexe overhead. Orion, The Pleiades and the Milky Way, always there.

“Whilst living in a remote area of the Northern Territory – Australia, her father Albert, woke her up at 3.am, to come outside and view a comet passing through our solar system on a journey that takes almost two thousand years to complete. It covered a third of the sky, a luminous body of blue and sparkling white. The connection she felt with the comet impacted her life more profoundly than any other event she can remember, and standing beneath the comet blazing across the starry sky she listened to her father’s stories, and of his own fascination with the visitor. She herself perceived it as an entity, and felt herself connected to it and embraced by the whole celestial sky and the comet within it.

There are moments that reverberate throughout our lives, certain moments that develop our artistic and spiritual world. They enrich and complement our individual interpretation of existence and being. This was one of those. As Glenda mentioned ‘I don’t look at things, rather I feel them. The earth, the water, everything comes in and I feel it.’” Marintan Sirait, Bandung 2014

Stella Effercio translates as star stuff. It is what we all are physically, with spirit to be interpreted by each sentient individual into their own perceived reality and belief. In this body of shimmering work, the artist finds herself still intuitively obsessed with stars, the eternal grid, and dreams of falling stars plummeting down to the earth. Such bodies destroy, seed the planet, and reform it. These heavenly travellers have fallen down before onto the earth and they are woven into the stories of many peoples across the earth, yet in the vast expanse of Australia, where the artists originates from, many such places are visible in the landscape and the shared imaginings of certain people, and a star or meteorite that falls to earth can be a gift.

The huge star fields, of Stella Imber, are again visited upon us, more richly interpreted into another part of the grid that underlies Sutardy’s interpretation of layered cosmic realities and interconnectivity. Each represents a different ‘cosmocosm’ in itself, and each has a story of its’ own, woven at the time of the works’ creation according to the intuitive feeling of the artist. There is a deeper mystery here, and at the same time, a greater clarity in the work as Glenda delves deeper into process and the meditative pleasure she experiences as she travels deeper into her own cosmic interpretation of existence. She says she finds solace and meaning amongst the layers of glittering mica, pearl powders and polymers. Sutardy employs the sublime; organic powders, suspended in polymers and oils for their translucency, earthiness and their traditional ties to ancient artists and the pure craft of painting. “I express myself through paint more than any other media. After becoming excited and inspired by ideas the dance of creating weaves a complex mix of excitement, meditation, intellectual rigor, and finally satisfaction. I would never want to be anything else other than an artist.”

“Working on these canvases dissolves worldly stresses. I disappear into the paint and as I work I find myself meditating on the the imagery of the crossed stars and layered grids that underpin all of the Stella series. Whilst painting, I drift subconsciously into a collective place where I know where my ancestors dwell and watch over me, and I meditate on unwritten ancient stories that I do not need to grasp intellectually because I feel them woven through my ancestry into my very being. I accept this and paint something I feel is ancient. It is like a memory, dimmed by the veil of my skin, and difficult to elucidate.”

The works, are loosely planned and evolve as they will, with mistakes or small deviations from basic intentions becoming freely woven into the paintings as they become another part of the greater story that everything is a part of, the interconnecting grid in a process of abandonment.

“I now know, I am subconsciously creating huge icons. I hope that they will weave the viewer into the story being told, making it become a part of their own journey, captured in and by the dreamlike quality that shimmers over and within the layers on the canvas.

This latest body of work is a deeper exploration into sublime and ancient mysteries barely grasped. A combination of intuitive feelings, process and materials, the artworks interconnect and seamlessly flow in and out of each other, inviting the viewer to experience their own interpretation of reality and experience another mind view.