Aurelia, Acrylic on Canvas 24''x24'' Nature serves as the unifying thematic for painter and printmaker Anne Caramanico, whose previous work as an environmental biologist drives her desire to reconcile science and art in her expressionist canvases. Her Quaker upbringing, the lush flora surrounding her Pennsylvania studio and home, and excursions into varied landscapes in places as disparate as Canada and Cambodia also inform this passion for natural forms and processes. Her nearly abstracted images rarely refer to any specific landscape, plant or flower, but instead work on a fundamentally evocative level. Caramanico’s titles, likewise, alternate between casual scenes, mythic figures and descriptive phrases, but a recurring contrast between more or less clearly-defined forms set against contrasting background colors unites her entire oeuvre.

A play of colors, forms and modes of application is often at work in Anne Caramanico’s paintings: some areas coagulate into sharper geometric forms separated by build-up of darker colors and lines scraped into the paint, other parts are given over into boundless, flowing abstraction. Her palette of natural colors ranges from chilled blues and blacks through earthy greens and browns to sun-splashed oranges. Throughout, relationships between figure and background never seem finalized or completely secure, suggesting forms that sway forward and back in the wind or wane and disappear according to a natural cycle of growth and decay.

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Two Ears Aflame, Archival Digital Print 20''x 28'' Cariappa Annaiah's photographs bring the visual balance between light and dark into stunning and unique relief, as sunlight and shadow dramatically engage with delicate organic objects to reveal their structural beauty. His sources include various flora, water, ice or indeed any surface with vivid embedded textures. Whether his lens focuses on the curves, lines and rich palette to be found in leaves and petals, or the patterns buried in ice or the ripples in flowing water, for Cariappa, the natural world is rich with possibilities for bringing forth such visual splendor. As we take in his photographs, these images speak to us through universal forms and structures, and we move from observers of his universe to welcome participants. Yet despite the intimacy of Cariappa's images, one subtext of his dramatic work is also the vastness of space. He treats intimate subject and vast background with equal importance, and with the sun as a partner in his art, he reveals the deeply woven structures and graceful forms that thrive in the very stuff of life. Although his chosen subjects are often fragile, there is an undeniable power to Cariappa Annaiah's work. These are more than just beautiful photographs of the natural world--these are expressions of a holistic view of the universe.

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