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"The Color of Dreaming - 'Dreamscapes' at the Chroma Gallery" by Brian Staker Published in The Event Magazine June 7, 2001 The relatively new Chroma Gallery in Sugarhouse is named after the Greek word meaning "color," and one of its first exhibits makes use of colors brilliantly to create subtly suggestive images. "Dreamscapes," a collection of paintings by Stephanie Saint-Thomas, will be shown throughout the month of June. The show includes over 20 new surrealistic landscapes that are rendered through Saint-Thomas's distinctive use of acrylic, metallic and resin media. The 30-year-old artist is relatively new to the Salt Lake fine arts scene, but was already known for years for her hand-painted jewelry, in demand locally and also carried by Saks Fifth Avenue in New York. Born in Spain, she grew up everywhere from Paris (where she first showed her artwork at age five), to adolescence in Holland. That has added a continental influence to her works. It was as recently as 1999 that she decided to change her focus from jewelry to painting. These definitely are the landscapes of something other than the everyday experience of waking life. "Sunken Forest" looks like just that, an immense growth of trees burgeoning underneath the surface of an ocean. "The Deepest Lilies" resembles Monet's "Water Lilies" if they had blossomed under the depths instead of on the surface of a pond. The horizon of "Distant Shore," in contrast to the deep greens and azures of some of her other pieces, seems to come ablaze in orange and crimson, like a maritime sunrise. "Tempest" depicts what could be either a roiling sky or convulsing ocean with also thin dark lines like the silhouettes or reeds blown about in the tumult. With no figures or other features on these "dreamscapes" to indicate a human presence, it's as though these dramatic canvases convey a state of mind themselves through the sheer force of their color and brushstroke. In addition to branching out from jewelry to paintings, Saint-Thomas has also started receiving commissions from interior designers for her hand-painted tables and wall-sized mirrors. In those too, like all of her works, an object that might be merely decorative attains the status of touchstone, resonating with the deep dream rhythms of the subconscious. View the collections |
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