30. aug.07

Karena A. Karras hails from Chicago, where she graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She also studied at the American Academy of Art, The Naguib School of Sculpture, and the Vogue School of Design. Her work is often compared to that of Surrealist painters such as Dorothea Tanning, Remedios Varo, and Leonora Carrington, but Karras doesn't follow the tenents of Surrealism herself. Rather, she's interested in expressing metaphysical ideas through the use of Jungian archetypes and mythic symbolism. As her website explains,"Through the utilization of the study of mythology, psychology, philosophy, metaphysics, fantasy, and the world of dreams, her work becomes a visual and tangible respresentation of an interplay between these worlds."

   Richard Kirk was born in Hull, England in 1962 and came to Canada at the age of 4. His work was influenced from an early age by the classic book illustrators and forms found in nature, particularly insects and their homes. It amazed him that creatures with weird, even monstrous, forms coexisted with the ordinary world of schools and gas stations. It was perhaps inevitable that his personal artistic explorations led him to explore fantastic and surrealist themes.