Too Pink - Acrylic on Canvas 35.5'' x 35.5'' niki.b’s comic book-inspired acrylic works on canvas approach their subject from unique and enlightening points of view. She makes use of the strong colors and textures of modern graphic design as a means of displaying her equally passionate love for American popular culture, especially tailfins and gleaming bumpers. She also takes Roy Lichtenstein’s use of the comic book panel one step further and portrays original characters musing upon specific moments of decision. Whether these moments are important or trivial, harmless or devious, we have no idea. The vital point is that niki.b is presenting to us these very human moments in an instant of her subjects’ lives. Another aspect of niki.b’s distinctive style is her choice of placing various philosophical thoughts inside animals’ heads. The aesthetic conceit of discussing ideas about human nature and the human condition by giving the thoughts to nonhuman characters is a long tradition in the arts. niki.b has added a sharp-edged humor and pathos to that tradition. Growing up under Communism as she did, niki.b valued the visual arts, especially those which could improve her feelings about herself and her life. She has given her anxieties over to her animal subjects, and in doing so, sheds new light on eternal issues of self-worth, honesty and the capacity for enlightenment.

Landscapes of the Mind IV - Oil on Canvas 48'' x 48''

Boston-based painter, Sandra Mueller-Dick, channels her personal experiences and interests into murky, ghostly visions. Though many of her works evoke figures and landscapes, she swaths these forms in layers of colors applied in kinetic, swirling patterns that create the effect of peering into foggy memories. Through these clouds, glimmers of bodies, valleys and rivers struggle to define themselves against deep red, blue, green and yellow mists. This theme of incomplete memory and blurry vision emerged in Mueller-Dick’s art when her father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. These canvases that never reveal their subjects and sometimes feature blacked-out corners represent absent memories, pieces missing from life’s puzzle, but they also provoke active imagination. Teetering on the edge of abstraction with often only the faintest echoes of landscapes and bodies—many of which are inspired by her interests in yoga and dance—Mueller- Dick’s expressionist style presents viewers with a colorful ghost world open to introspective exploration. These spaces and forms, visible in outline but not filled out, invite viewers to contribute their own partial remembrances. Owing perhaps to her work as a gallery instructor at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, her paintings mediate personal therapeutic projects and thematic interests while remaining open to shifting meanings and approaches. Mueller-Dick creates spaces for our forgotten dreams by visualizing partial memories.