Two collages from the series "Heavenly Gardens"

This series with a beautiful name Heavenly Gardens begins to conclude a theme in Tihemets’ work that seems to have emerged accidentally in the 1960s. Through her trumpet-blowing cherub from 1962, her angels in soft varnish technique from 1991 and a series in offset and dry point techniques in 2009, she has arrived to the cherubs of the heavenly gardens, which are among the most beautiful in this long saga of angels.

Executed in collage technique, the celestial messengers appear in the compositions assembled from the cut-outs from several earlier prints. They are a natural part of the image among flowers, abstract surfaces and crosses. Sometimes appearing larger and sometimes smaller, sometimes looking like shadows and sometimes clearly articulated, they gather around the White Cross from 1999, or scatter among the flowers in series Enchantment of Orchids from 2007.

Evi Tihemets has excellent combination skills and sense of integrity. What may have been sparse, too straightforward or oversimplified in some of her earlier works, is assembled here (blessed be the reproducibility of printmaking!) into gorgeous images moving on the borderline of abstraction and realism.