Styles vary from electrifying to casual

By Victoria Gail-White
Advertiser Art Critic

•	Recent Works: Cora Yee and Mark N. Brown Through Wednesday Atelier 4 gallery 524-3552

Yee's work is highly stylistic. Unlike her minutely detailed silk-screen printed works on paper, her eight acrylic paintings on canvas are big and bold. Cartoonlike, cosmic renditions of spiritual symbols (inspired by her extensive travels to Africa and Nepal) electrify the wall with color.

Neon lime-green snakes, yellow leopards and white tigers appear to coil and leap out of the darker pigmented background colors in an atmosphere of lotus flowers, planets, stars and gold leaf.

Nothing about these paintings is timid. They provoke and at the same time play with mystical and erotic iconography.

In "Snake Heart," two water snakes forming the shape of a heart, representing the Hindu deity, Naga, face each other in locked eye contact with their tongues out — ready to tantalize each other or battle, it's hard to tell.

Where Yee's work is out of this world, Brown's impressionistic oils on canvas are very much in it. His familiar street and beach scenes of life in Hawai'i employ loose brush strokes and a soft palette. Brown's casual style enhances the relaxed manner of his subjects and suggests a worry-free paradise.

As a member of this downtown artist-owned and -operated gallery, Brown can be found painting scenes such as "The Courtyard" during his Monday shift.