In Jacqueline Staikos’ oil paintings, familiar images begin to look disarmingly foreign—a leaf resembles a swaddled infant or a cloud resembles a luxurious lock of hair. Staikos’ landscape-inspired paintings are carefully composed, yet her forms take on a free-spirited life of their own, suggesting a fantastic world in which nature is surreally intensified.

Line work, attenuated detail, and an earthy palette distinguish Staikos’ aesthetic. Staikos works intuitively, responding to her materials and forms and letting her painting develop spontaneously. Since she treats every line, every shadow, and every highlight as an organism with its own autonomous identity, the elements of her paintings coalesce to create a panorama of self-assured forms. This confident, harmonizing approach reinterprets the wrought tradition of figurative landscape painting, turning landscape into dreamscape. Born in France, Staikos grew up in Canada and has shown widely. She currently lives and works in the Quinte Region of Ontario.