Alva Review-Courier -

TOP LEFT: This painting by J.M.W. Turner is called "Hannibal Crossing the Alps." Hannibal's army is tiny in the face of the overwhelmingly powerful snowstorm descending on them – an apt expression of the European approach to the terror and beauty of the sublime. TOP RIGHT: This painting by Albert Bierstadt, titled "Deer At Sunset," illustrates the American approach to the the sublime, with its emphasis on inner calm in the face of the potentially terrible. CENTER & BOTTOM LEFT: With "Catlin Utopia," Madeleine Bialke enters into a conversation with Old West painter George Catlin, just below it. The Catlin painting over which Bialke's version hovers is called "Buffalo Chase with Bows and Lances," In Bialke's "Catlin's Utopia," the Catlin-style buffalo are free to run Catlin's smooth green hills without fear of slaughter. BOTTOM RIGHT: In this painting, "Campfire," Bialke again brings elements of early Western landscape art back into today's ongoing landscape narrative.