The notable exception to this, however, are the paintings by Barbara Zuber. Her paintings are populated with dark silhouette-like figures. There are few facial features, but in not having a lot of emotional expressions diminish the figures, the figures become sign posts and street lamps as far as the painting is concerned. It seems that the figures aren’t the subject of the painting—the environment is. Through the use of dull colors and simple shapes, a somewhat depressing, realistic sense is added to the painting.

I particularly liked “Easter Sunday,” which had a bunch of figures dressed in Easter finery standing in some kind of city square. Different kinds of mediums were blended together, with text clipped from newspapers for signs, little thin pieces of wood and wall paper for texturing, and blobs of color clipped from magazines for clothing. The textures and movement of the painting are all part of the well-balanced and unique artistic stylings of Zuber.

The rest of the paintings were more on the abstract side. Some of the most abstract works were by Francelise Dawkins. Her works mostly involved pastel colored fabric and paper cut into shapes and put onto the canvas. There was one work that was a 3-D shape hanging from the ceiling. I’m afraid I entirely missed the point of all three works by this artist, but at least she used an interesting medium.

Stephen Tyson had a few works in his collection that similarly didn’t make much sense. These works were mostly composed of circles with different colored dots in them. These little circles covered the entire canvas. For the most part these paintings were fairly boring. These paintings, however, did not make up the entirety of the collection. There were some paintings that were very well-balanced with vibrant colors and organic shapes that had vague forms. Still, these works failed to be stimulating overall.

The best abstract work was contributed by Stanwyck Cromwell. He used colors very well in his works—contrasting warm and cool colors very effectively, making the works interesting. My favorite work was “Tree of Thoughts.” The composition was very interesting, with a lot of smooth lines drawing the eye through the painting. The tree was composed of cool colors on a warm background. “Mingling of the Cultures,” on the other hand, was perhaps just a little too busy. There were too many color and shapes flying around.