Oceana Rain Stuart tries to perpetuate the moment. Moreover, by doing so, the opposite effect happens: she only accentuates the beauty of its ephemerality.

These are intense feelings with a high emotional charge, which, due to their nature, tend to be mild and fleeting, like smoke that dissipates itself in a blow. It depicts love in an eternal kiss or a passionate embrace. The fleeting joy, the ephemeral beauty or even the brevity of life. Stuart reflects on the transience of life through art. Her models undergo a clash between existence and extinction, swinging in a natural balance. The contrast between life and death, in which, the first provokes the latter, evidencing it or defying it. Depicting a multiplicity of feelings and emotions that represent several states of mind. It is also striking that the skull seems to have different connotations depending on its position. A symbol with dissimilar perspectives that reflect the dangers and the fragility, or the strength and power of those who own it. The skull has a cyclic character, it means transformation, and makes us aware of our transitory condition on this planet. In some positions, raising the skull to the top of the head suggests an intellectual elevation, a spiritual rebirth that reflects human superiority. In others, it appears to show the strength of thought and wisdom. However, the skull points to the undeniable: the end is inevitable! We are all equal on the inside, and we remain so even after death.

The poses are graceful, and the twists reinforce the flexibility and fluidity of the human body. It unleashes a unique musicality, like a surrounding melody that makes them contort themselves in a pleasurable seduction. They are feeling-filled poses, emanating from inner energy, which alludes to the individual’s most rooted condition. It functions as a state of deep meditation, a trance, in which the physical and the spirit meet in a place between two worlds.

By Pedro Boaventura • Excerpt from Masters of Contemporary Fine Art - Volume 3

 

Oceana Rain Stuart was born in Forest Knolls, California and is a figurative sculpture artist and poet. She currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and her atelier is in Sausalito, California. Through her work, Stuart explores tension in emotionally evocative subject matter that is expressive of light and dark qualities. Her unique molding techniques and surface treatments subtly blend the worlds of realism and surrealism.

Stuart grew up in a multi-generational artistic family in California in the United States. As a young adult, she lived in Europe, where she was inspired by many of the art masters of the past and present. Stuart took classes at both the Laguna College of Art and Design and the San Francisco Art Institute, but considers herself largely a self-taught artist. Stuart holds dual citizenship with the United States of America and Italy.

Stuart’s work is part of private collections internationally and she is currently working on her next bronze sculpture series which will be unveiled in early 2019.