threads-of-innovation-art-on-repurposed-linen

 The title describes something Czimber did by necessity that turned out to be interesting on its own terms: painting on linen that had a previous life before it held a painting. What happens when the ground of a work has its own history is that you can't quite separate the painting from the material — the texture of the linen is part of the texture of the image, the prior use part of the new use. These portraits exist because of scarcity, and that origin is part of what makes them distinct from anything made under more comfortable conditions.