Maria Aratún’s bursts of vividly hued paint are an expression of her optimistic outlook on life and passion for the creative act of painting.  Each jewel toned oil painting is a deeply personal manifestation of Aratún’s artistic spirit, rendered in her  unique and multicultural visual vocabulary, and possesses a percussive, musical quality that stimulates both the viewers’ visual and auditory senses. The works bloom into being, engaging the viewer as a witness to an aesthetic metamorphosis. Truly an extension of her persona, the artist views each artistic endeavor as a birth, as she provides the breath, light, and life to each vibrant canvas. 

Born in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, where she now resides, the multi-lingual Maria Aratún has lived throughout the world, acquiring an international understanding that informs the individualized visual language that characterizes her body of work.  Aratún’s paintings are exhibited internationally and included in numerous private and corporate collections. 

Artist Cherny wants viewers of her work to see what is “inside of her.” And that is a passion for life clearly expressed through abstract paintings. In her work, light and color seemingly dance across the canvas in glowing lines of diffusing color, giving an effect not unlike that of the Aurora Borealis moving across the northern sky. Cherny’s mastery of complexly toned color, borne out of her love for Impressionist painters such as Cézanne and Van Gogh, underscores her work, giving them a unique depth.

But Cherny uses more than color to transmit what is inside of her; Cherny literally uses her whole body to get her message out, employing hands, soul, and feet to paint. Thus, not only is her inner self on the canvas, her physical self is there too. Through this union of body and soul as well as her multicultural background, Cherny speaks to the viewer with an intensity that goes beyond the movement of paint and color.

Tamar Greenfeld touches hearts directly with the magical depth and softness of her palette.  Upon close examination, a glimpse of a face, a bird, a flower or butterfly teases one’s eye, but their discovery is more of a lovely gift than a reason for the painting’s existence.  By painting in layers for the illusion of transparency, Ms. Greenfeld replicates life’s universally abundant, but hidden, beauty. 

Patricia Brintle creates expressionist paintings with a tropical flair, beautifully conveying imagery of the people and places from her homeland as well as those encountered on her travels and in her imagination. Her portraiture articulates the inner essence of an individual while crafting flesh and fabrics with wonderful painterly strokes. With the same quality of detail, Brintle paints sensitive textures of flowers and plants as well as dazzling splashes of color during an island sunset.

Being self-taught, she moves easily between styles and media, developing fresh symbolic imagery and allowing the mood of her subject to speak through its own unique skin. “My medium is as varied as my subjects and will use acrylic, oil, watercolor, pen and ink or pencil depending on the effect that I want to achieve.” Born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, she immigrated to the United States before her twentieth birthday, while firmly maintaining her personal identity and family history. Her award-winning paintings have been exhibited both privately and publicly in New York and Florida.

Elaine Sidor-Hines’ pastels are a poignant probe of a lost past. Influenced by her childhood amongst family on a rural farm in Kentucky, Hines’ work explores a dreamscape of memories, one of pastoral elegance and fragility. Her subjects are birds, to which she adds great detail and movement, while the background remains abstract and dappled with light carrying with it a sense of magic. The birds are often paired and illuminated, conveying a sense of pilgrimage, of searching; not for each other, but instead searching together, as if on a heroic journey in a storybook tale. Hines’ compositions are poised and balanced and convey a sense of distance, as if one has come across the birds quite by accident in some dreamy, far off place. This distance creates a sense of timelessness that adds to the wonder of the compositions.

Elaine Sidor-Hines holds degrees in Fine Art and Design. She lives and works in Florida where she also operates a bird farm.

Jenia’s paintings exemplify beauty, vibrancy and even a hint of magic.  Although painting in essence freezes scenes in time, Jenia’s landscapes spring to life, dazzling with light and movement.  Whether painting the forest or a body of water, Jenia soaks her scenes in sun through the ample use of cool, bright whites.  Even when the subject matter shifts to portraiture, highlights usher in fluidity and radiance.  Blues and greens may dominate her canvases, but it is the brilliant white accents that jolt the senses.  The color combinations are so tantalizingly crisp that they make age-old subject matter appear fresh and exciting.  Stoic birches, crashing waves, and magnificent mountains captivate and amaze in their natural splendor.  It is almost as if the viewer has stumbled upon a sacred trajectory of land.    

Jenia makes her art “so familiar you can hear the waves in the bay or the crunching of the snow under your feet.”  The Russian-born artist’s paintings join the ranks of global culture.