For Milt Masur, creating colorful bas-relief art works—at once paintings and sculptures—comes from a desire to interpret the world through art. He refers to the book by Cynthia Freeland, But Is It Art? in which one interpretation of art is, “continuing examination of our perceptual awareness and a continuing expansion of our awareness of the world around us.” Masur puts it slightly differently: “Creativity in general and art in particular constantly re-shape our perception of our outer environment as it interacts with our inner selves.” Of the many ways to be creative, visual art has the advantage of uniting these interactions by capturing a meaningful moment in time.

The Brooklyn born, Long Island based artist and still practicing physician thinks that creativity is a physiological part of human nature, and credits his medical experience as one of the shapers of his humanistic ethos. His evocative paintings provide a tension between surface and depth, the tactile and the visual, the durable and the fleeting, perhaps in some way, illustrating our constant search into the exterior and interior world. He applies enamel and oil paints on bas-relief collages to create three-dimensional pictures. There is a sense of colorful, dense excitement in his sweeping, elegant landscapes.

There are broad vistas of mountain ranges, coastal cliffs, desert expanses and serene woodlands rendering eloquent, personalized spaces. Masur captures the sheen of moving water and gently swirling reeds, building the textured surfaces with layer after layer of color. The sculptural and collage elements give palpable interpretations of the subjects he paints and provide a powerful sense of identity; the applied color provides nuance and mood; the combination, sometimes a feeling of wonder. He uses a bold, natural palate rife with brilliant hues.

The exotic scenes and vivid colors that characterize the paintings of Christine Drummond highlight the expressive abandon of an artist working in her natural element. Gatherings formed of brightly colored figures standing, walking, carrying loads on their heads or dancing enthusiastically. Rendered in impasto oils with swift strong strokes of the palette knife, the speed of execution adds to the feeling of movement within the paintings and gives them a real feeling of life. Drummond’s use of color underpins this, using complementary shades of orange, Prussian blue and jewel-like earth tones to create tension and focus within the pieces. It is the intensity of color that adds a jubilant, celebratory feel to her work.

Jenifer Carey in her studio It is nearly impossible to contemplate the works of Jenifer Carey and not feel an overwhelming sense of the overflowing joyous energy with which they are imbued. Heavily influenced by daring masters of color such as Matisse, Carey uses the warm, intense hues of the Mediterranean, incorporating deep ultramarine blue, cream, red and ochre, to build up her compositions and form her figures. In their unadulterated state, the colors glow from the canvas, adding to Carey’s masterly working of light, be it strong directional beams from a window that hit the figures head-on or the luminous yellow glow of indoor lighting. However, what strikes one most about Carey’s works are their movement and dynamism.

Her generous stippled brush-marks make surfaces ripple and support her compositions; these are strongly directional, following the line of traditional basic design to lead the eye fully through the painting along the golden section. There are then opposing directional lines that cut across the paintings, adding power and tension. All of these individual factors come together in Jenifer Carey’s work to produce wonderfully atmospheric paintings which radiate the boldness and zest for life that she herself feels. In many sense the works are expressionist, Carey putting her energy and positive worldview directly into them. Having been born into a privileged family, it was through her work as a physiotherapist that she was able to realise fully her desire to give something back to society rather than to receive.