Aga Cela in her studio While the German-born artist Aga Cela occasionally paints landscapes, flowers, and still lifes, the majority of her works focus on a single figure—a man, woman, or child—whom she depicts in a powerfully stylized manner. Aga Cela works from photographs of the subject, someone she knows, conjuring the composition from her knowledge of the individual combined with her personal artistic intuition. The resulting creations, typically executed in oil on linen, rely on the careful blending of color, line, and shadow to offer a powerful and immediate impression of the subject’s natural disposition. Her artistic technique shifts with respect to the person at hand. At times the strokes run seamlessly together, creating areas of softly transitioning tones and forms that gently flow into each other. At other times the brushwork is quite distinct, as if certain strokes stand on their own to emphasize key moments in or elements of the composition.

This altering of technique contributes to the distinct mood conveyed by each work, providing a glimpse of the individual as well as insight into his or her particular character. A jocular smile, a pensive stare, an anxious glance, an innocent gaze—such clear and emotive expressions communicate the intended atmosphere of the painting in which they appear, bolstered by auxiliary, and at times fanciful background details such as flowers, draped furniture, animals, and instruments. Regardless of these supporting elements, our focus is drawn to the human subject, as Aga Cela unmistakably intends.

Marcela in her studio Like an intimate window into the primal elements at the heart of our world, surges of vibrant color and lushly textured shapes thrive on Marcela’s canvases with barely contained energy. Her abstract paintings fully embrace the mystery of nature, in which distinct particles come together to create beautiful, mesmerizing patterns. This richly organic aesthetic, a confluence of discrete parts and a visual sense of flow, also has a direct parallel in her creative process, a fervently held personal vision, which she transfers to the canvas.
Although her choice of materials has evolved, from oils to acrylics and collage, Marcela has always placed her faith in subjective inspiration. Marcela's true muse comes from her unconscious, not from outside objects or preconceived ideas. For Marcela, the work process is about letting what is inside come out, an internal exploration brought forth and presented as a form of personal communication from her to us. She is also deeply spiritual in her art in that she regards herself as a mere guide to these visions, as well as a navigator through the impressions of what she calls her personal journey in search of self.
For Marcela, a canvas is a place where the unknown can be manifest. This process leads to her vivid, stunning arrays of form and motion, like stained glass figures come alive, animating a world of sensations, which would otherwise lie dormant.

Flower Power - Ball Point Pen, Coloured Pencil 12'' x 16.5'' Renata Cebular creates lyrical artworks that form visual harmonies out of chaos. Her work, produced with ballpoint pen and colored pencil, has an Op Art appearance at first glance due to the swirling abstract explosions of color and pattern. Yet on looking closer, we find that the images recall such different subjects as plant life and flowers, birds and fireworks, becoming meditative and soulful. Whimsical lines released for a frenetic journey loop and cross themselves, forming shapes for patterns and color to fill. Cebular’s technique is to draw the basic patterns at the beginning, using both hands, and this lends a natural sensation to Cebular’s work, as if the everyday doodle has taken a wonderful turn and been transformed into fine art. “The patterns and forms, colors and lines flow from the art daydreams onto the paper out of a feeling of timelessness and harmony of the given moment,” she explains. The disparate regions of the image unify to create the whole, a dynamic visual symphony.