Execu-Suites Features

Tracy Burke was born in Duluth, Minnesota, in 1971 and currently resides and works in Orlando, Florida. She received a BFA in Fine Art from the University of Central Florida in 1995. Tracy explores color and pattern in her large abstracts, and demonstrates presence and confrontation in her stylized figurative work. Her art is collected throughout the United States and Canada. Tracy is also the founder of ArtSmart-Online.com, a website created to showcase both her work and the work of her husband, artist Ralph Verano. Both Ralph and Tracy maintain an online blog featuring day-to-day activities of the artists, as well as works in progress at www.gooddaytopaint.blogspot.com.

“The visual world is relentless to a creative soul; you just need to know how to process it. My painting style explores spatial, textural and color relationships that are unexpected, yet subtly balanced. I am fascinated with creating pieces that have a unique expression, and like when chaos bumps into order. That’s something I couldn’t learn in art schools, they like to critique the creativity right out of a painting. My best education comes from looking at past ‘masters’ and deconstructing their lesser known pieces; a lot can be learned from the pages in a sketchbook or the beginning of an idea.”

Artist Martha Jo Mahoney’s canvas reflects her travels across the Americas, the Far East as well as Florida landscapes where she grew up. Mahoney works with vivid colors in oil, acrylic, chalk and graphite on canvas and paper in a style influenced by modern American “realist expressionist” painters such as Mitchell, Diebenkorn, and DeKooning. “Working quickly, continuously layering paint and medium down and pushing it around with brush or hands, keeping no area sacred…always baiting accidents, playing with the medium and striving to achieve a balance between accident and control. My images are derived from nature and remembered feelings of the landscapes from my travels and home.

A longtime fan of Eastern philosophies, Pauline Ziegen is drawn to the perceptual elements and materials of Chinese and Japanese art.. “I love the way the artists convey the illusion of space using minimalist drawing techniques, and I find the gold leaf in Japanese folding screens both traditional and austerely modern. Their craftsmanship and the integration of art and life in Eastern philosophies have inspired my work ever since,” she says.Ziegen’s innate sense of harmony and balance results in horizons that are soothing, calm, and orderly. To keep them from being too static, she introduces subtle yet energizing lines that breaks her impeccable surfaces with small “dots.” The lines become provocateurs that grab the eye asking it to bridge opposites: the upper and lower registers, heaven and earth, the inner and outer worlds, being and non-being, and perhaps just as importantly, the landscape as perception and painted object.Saying more with less is at the heart of Ziegen’s approach. “I want to create haikus rather than sonnets,” she says.

Born in 1983, native Floridian artist Oliver Brave challenges traditional art elements and breaks many principles of design. After leaving various art institutions, Oliver’s radical style is unconventional in both technique and imagery. Utilizing multiple mediums and substrates, Oliver often experiments with the pigments to create pieces that evoke a mystery of application. With little to no representational subject matter, his compositions are based on expressive gestures, articulated patterns, and past experiences. As he pushes his creative boundaries, Oliver tends to align himself with the deconstrustionalist’s approach of breaking down images to a basic element, and then translates that element through different mark makings.

Born in 1959 in Cocoa, Florida, Pulliam always knew he was going to be an artist. At the age of 22, he opened his first gallery. He quickly gained notoriety winning a number of awards at art shows and exhibiting his work in local galleries. Today Pulliam’s work can be seen all over the world. He and his wife reside in Winter Garden, Florida. Says the artist; “I believe that surrendering to my instincts and letting my imagination and talent work the canvas, provide ongoing education to my self-awareness. My earlier images were dependent on detailed, realistic interpretations. Later in my career I became less satisfied with technical depiction and began to focus on the other elements of painting. I began moving toward patterns, color and texture. My need to simplify became the dominant point of my expression, a process that I find tremendously gratifying.”