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Elements of Abstraction Elements of Abstraction presents audiences with a rich kaleidoscope of color, form, and texture that in conjunction breathes life into abstract artworks. Whether employing shimmering brushstrokes or bold fields of color, nonrepresentational art, with its lack of familiar forms, allows the work speak to us on an especially elemental level. Through their deeply personal forms of expression, these artists offer a stunning glimpse into contemporary abstract painting.
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Diana Arkhi
 
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Diana Arkhi's analytical painting is actually skillful, organic painting, where every detail, each fragment is alive. She channels an artist's consciousness, which, according to her, "penetrates through the material and creates a new… the hidden lining of universal creation and an essence of world consciousness that composes and gives birth to other new forms of life." As inspirations, Wassily Kandinski, Kasimir Malevich, and Michael Vrubel continually help Arkhi find in art "some deep magical unreal reality." This mystical quality is palpable in her work, even as it is executed with a methodical technical mastery. The minute attention to detail in her works comes from her background in art restorations, as she has worked with treasured antique orthodox icons, tempera paintings, wood carved painted sculpture, works with gold leaf and gold/silver imitations.
Born in Kishinev, Moldova, Arkhi has been commissioned to paint for Pope Benedict XVI and has participated in major art exhibitions and had solo shows throughout Western Europe and the Baltics.
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"Untitled"
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"The Manifest"
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Alicia Falcone
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Classic Asian style gets a modern makeover thanks to Alicia Falcone. Part Zen and part mod, the paintings uphold the rich traditions of the Far East while resonating with a contemporary audience.
Prominent Chinese characters ground the paintings in the works of the East. They simultaneously are themselves a work of art contained within the context of a larger painting. Falcone personalizes these character renderings through playful brushstrokes. More figurative imagery, such as someone meditating, continues the Chinese theme. Red paint, emphatically used in much of Falconeʼs work, harkens back to the symbolic colors found in China. What distinguishes Falconeʼs paintings from more classic oriental works is her modern approach. She evokes the minimalism of the 1950s and ʽ60s by painting grids and circles. Her bold shapes and stark contrasts in color position the paintings in a contemporary sphere, regardless of their subject matter.
Falcone, born in Argentina, was an attorney before moving to Singapore where she spent seven years. Alicia currently resides in Florida working as a Feng Shui consultant, interior decorator and artist.
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"Buddha II"
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"The Meditator"
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Nina Ozbey
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Each of Nina Ozbey’s vibrant paintings has its own cadence. Some are fast-paced, abrupt, and persistent, while others are more measured, understated, and varied. Still others begin with a measure, controlled rhythm and then erupt into a swirl of movement and color. Certainly akin to the abstract expressionism that percolated post-World War II art, Ozbey’s work takes the reckless abandon of post-war expressionist painters into different mark-making territory. Like contemporary artist Cecily Brown’s figurative and abstract work, Ozbey’s emotive paintings are not as brash as they are intentionally lively.
Born in Oklahoma City, Ozbey became a teacher after attending Oklahoma State University in the 1960s. She pursued art on her own, transitioning from figurative watercolors to emotive oil painting. The ways in which Ozbey’s effusive marks fill the canvas suggest a certain maturity. Each painting offers insight into the ways in which nature and human life interact—sometimes life appears bleak and vast and sometimes it appears animated and accessible. Ozbey lives and works in Earlysville, Virginia.
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"Down Deep"
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"Royal Flush"
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Jorgen Rosengaard
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Jorgen Rosengaard, a Danish world traveler and explorer, attempts to touch the untouchable. His uncommon landscapes of dark, rich acrylic colors, climax in a horizon that's just out of reach, as if the beautiful mountain in the distance is something on the tip of one's tongue, residing on the edge of memory, binding the horizon of the imagination.
The horizon is often at the top of the canvas, far away, with so much land and so little sky. In the foreground is a layered, controlled chaos of color, an intimidating agriculture to be revered and at once questioned. Traveling, to Rosengaard, seems an ultimate, profound expression, and has influenced his work to an unlimited degree. The lens of the artist as explorer or even hunter (as he has referred to himself), is immediate even though the canvas may express a yearning and reaching for what is beyond reach and expression. Sometimes, in his meditative yet urgent paintings, that untouchable horizon seeps into the foreground, and our world is that much richer.
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"Land 3"
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"Land 2"
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