By Cindy Blain
 Sukey Bryan stands in front of her oil painting titled “By Fire or Fire,” 7 by 9 feet. |
Sukey Bryan - a local artist with a national reputation - is one of 16 artists selected by this year’s Silicon Valley Open Studios jurors to be in the 2005 Stars Collection.
The exhibit will be on view at Main Street Cafe & Books through April 14. Other artists include Linda Curtis, Marjorie Law, Patricia Machmiller, Silvia Poloto, Simone Raoux and Steve Soult.
Galleries in Baltimore, San Francisco and Oregon display Bryan’s work. She resides on the Stanford University Campus.
Her large, powerful oil paintings portray the primal forces of nature: volcanoes, fire and the sea. Her painting at Main Street Cafe & Books, “Break, Break, Break,” is a strong blue-gray-green representation of the ocean at its most formidable. As in many of her paintings, the image is a close-up of an awesome element - not a distant, safe seascape.
“I want the viewer to be really in the wave,” Bryan said. “It’s almost as if the water is a stand-in for ourselves, in the sense that our own lives are moved along by forces that are greater than us. Just as the water is shaped and moved by external forces, so are we. The ocean is a metaphor for transformation.”
Books influence Bryan’s artwork “quite a bit.” Bryan was re-reading “The Tempest” as she worked on the sea paintings. She commented that when she was working on the series, she noticed all the references to water in T.S. Eliot. Later as she worked on her fire series, she noticed all the fire references.
Since most of her paintings are exhibited in San Francisco or out of state, Bryan participates in Open Studios to share with her neighbors and their children what she is working on in her converted two-car garage studio.
In addition to her large, 7-by-9-feet works, Bryan paints smaller pieces that measure only a few inches across.
She has scheduled her studio opening, May 14 and 15. To view more of her paintings, log on to www.sukeybryan.com.
For the complete list of Stars artists, log on to www.svlocalartists.org.
Cindy Blain is a watermedia artist with Viewpoints Gallery on State Street. Contact her at (408) 268-5959 or cindy@cindyblain.com.
