Carolyn Quan
Alayne Dickey
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aptivated by mysterious depths and tidal rhythms, Alayne Dickey credits water as her primary muse. Overwhelmingly inspired by her sea-encircled native terrain off the northern coast of Scotland, Dickey's swirling abstractions allude to water's visible reality, but speak symbolically of archetypes and things primordial. Intuitively guided, yet systematic and deliberate in her painting process,
I
n 2002, after a dazzling twenty-year career in commercial arts specializing in the music industry, Carolyn Quan turned her creative efforts towards the fine arts. Inspired by her love of nature and humanity, Quan seeks to realize her spiritual worldview through her visual explorations. Her career, which included designing album covers for popular musicians, has clearly been influential to her fine arts style. Her deeply moving piece, "Victorian Angel" features a central, translucent female figure with her back turned towards the viewer. The scene is mysterious
Dickey begins with a low-dimensional springboard layer that guides subsequent creative choices. Progressing layer by layer, allowing sections of foundational applications to remain visible while building up density and texture in other sections of a composition, Dickey creates a sense of depth, dimension and satisfying aesthetic value. Anchored in tenebrous murk evoctive of river bottoms and sea beds, cumulative swirls crest to cresendos, surging with turbulence and undulation. Emphasizing water's behavior and attributes as opposed to merely imitating its appearance, Alayne expresses water as a visual sensation and emotional experience. Achieving complexity through suggestive layers, Dickey draws her audience to contemplative pools of varying depths, where feeling is implicit and metaphors abound.
and otherworldly as black skies, smoky clouds and tall, flowing grass enclose upon the figure. As the title suggests, the woman is clothed in a Victorian-era dress that seems to transform to feathers and wings before our very eyes. Background and foreground are confounded through the manipulation of opacity, giving the image a ghostly quality. Quan's work speaks very well for her intentions, "Inspired by spirituality and all of the divine beauty that God has created on this earth, I feel that it is my duty to share this inspiration with others though my art and creative vision." After spending eleven years in New York City, Quan moved to Maui, Hawaii to focus on her personal artistic vision. She has recently opened her own gallery in Maui, and continues to achieve international recognition. www.carolynquan.com
Olga Baby
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he unique style of talented Russian artist Olga Baby possesses the harmony of linear construction, rhythm and vibrant color of a Japanese woodblock print. Her imaginative, asymmetric compositions capture the spirit and emotion of her artistic fantasy - constantly searching and chang-
ing and as wide as her extensive travels across the globe.
Her imagery shows freshness and innocence, admirably portrayed in the drawing entitled "Jazz." In this work Baby mixes color and pattern with purity of line to convey her unique mix of the imaginary and the real. Baby draws in black ink on white cartridge paper with spontaneous, graceful brushstrokes. She then introduces intentionally large areas of vivid primary colors and patterns. At first glance her work has a decorative quality, but like the Japanese masters, who balanced heaven, earth and humankind in their harmonious images, Baby's work goes deeper.
Olga Baby studied Japanese art, Buddhism and the philosophy of Ikebana, and the influences are evident throughout her works which exude joie de vivre, spontaneity and a positive energy that comes from the artist's personal way of looking at the world.