impart a living aspect to these pieces. The green veins encircling a trumpet pulse with a beating heart. Satiny smooth lusters give way to hidden feathery folds. Vivid grains emerge from crenellated cups of incandes-
cence. These works are a life force, frozen, enlarged, an instant of vibrance, of energy, captured.
 

One smolders, the other blazes. Yet these seemingly contrary themes — the smoky earthtones of the tiles and their temporal patterns, in stark contrast with the jubilant abstractions, the radiant effervescence of the My Garden figures — are both distillations of the same vision. Siglinda Scarpa understands these very different aspects of her natural world and renders with astonishing clarity the complexity she finds there.

Written By Lee Finch