Brash bursts of flowers and busily textured passages of collage crowd the paintings, drawings, and wood sculpture in "Secret Gardens" a survey of 1990s work by Miami-based artist Sheila Elias. Undermined by a repetitive decorative strain, the paintings' elaborate and overworked odes to the still-life tradition predominate, with an occasional nod given to landscape, as in the large painting Water Garden.

Photocopied bits of fabric and handsomely printed Japanese papers fashioned into bristling bouquets commingle with imagery inspired by ancient Greek kraters and amphorae. the painted vessels often bear photocopied reproductions of running warriors boasting classical musculature. Such a combination does give Elias's work a hectic energy, which produce es both engaging images, as in the spiraling whirlwind of Flying Blossoms (1996), and stilted quotations, as in gray Flourish (1996).

The strongest work in the show has Elias breaking free from the rectangular canvas, a framework that seems to stifle her longtime fascination with fluid, darting forms that slightly echo Matisse cutouts. Tondos Rondo (1997) is a wall mounted cluster of 24 works, ranging in diameter from 8 to 24 inches. They feature spunky cameos plucked fro Elias's colorful cast of images. Mounted separately from her larger canvases and reassembled here, the floral forms and ovoid vessels, which together suggest a swift shower of confetti, hover on a white wall in a nearly cinematic stream of gardens.
 
Elisa Turner
Miami Art Critic

CHANNEL Magazine

Sheila Elias' Passionate, color soaked canvases are filled with the vivid hues of an imagination that has been both her guide and her muse and have appeared in galleries and exhibitions around the world.
Inspired by Matisse, Elias' work is driven by a unique collage technique (like the one she used to paint the border around this page) that incorporates the realism of photography and mechanical reproduction with her own personal mindscape. " The art maintains a life of its own; it takes you where it wants you to go" she explains. " I'm inspired by technology and myths" - her latest series, Chaos and Technology, explores the downside of modern convenience - "but it's really mysterious where the ideas come from."

EL NUEVO HERALD - February 21, 1999

SHEILA ELIAS – THE JOY OF PAINTING

Sheila Elias arrived in South Florida at the end of the ‘80’s. Born in Chicago, she studied at the prestigious Art Institute of Chicago, bringing with her not only an impressive curriculum of personal and collective exhibitions, but also the reputation of being one of the most original creators, both in New York and Los Angeles.

This reputation extended to Miami, backed by the presence of her work in important private and public collections, outstanding honors, and extended bibliography and her public activities, all of which allow us to follow her constant and ascending career.

Persistent in the diffusion of her work, in 1997 she had three exhibitions in Florida, at the Lowe Art Museum at the university of Miami, the Hollywood Art and Culture Center, and the Jeanine Cox Gallery of Miami. In 1998, her traveling exhibition, “Secret Gardens,” became part of the program of the New England Museum of Contemporary Art in Brooklyn, CT, the Public Art Program of Orlando FL, and the Edison College of Fort Myers, FL. SECRET GARDENS can be taken as a point of reference to the new exhibit of her most recent works at the Veneto Gallery in Miami.

This previous exhibit was a visual challenge by the power of its enormous sunflowers, almost at a burning point, the balancing labyrinths of her rose petals, and the green of the climbing vines. An exuberant vegetation world infiltrated then emerged from the surface of her canvas and also from the papers she executed using collages to achieve the most elaborate backgrounds.

The collection, as viewed by critics – in spite of obvious distances, - invites us to a comparison to what many have called the “overdecorativism” of Matisse. Also there are elements from Art History, such as sinuous lines from antique Greek vases. In these vases, the figure of a warrior represents the synthesis of physical harmony and drawing ability. These elements continue to appear in this new collection.

If SECRET GARDENS was a celebration of the joy of creativity and the splendor of nature, in spite of its many possible meanings, this new collection opens up to the subject spectrum to a new repertoire of reflections and emotions intersecting the labyrinth of the human condition and the possibilities dictated by each epoch. In other words, these new works are Elias’ answer to immediate stimuli. Once more, the artist directs her passion to that constantly renewed challenge, constituting the main sign of contemporary man’s identity.

There is no doubt that the complex world which Elias portrays, expresses the profound understanding of the everyday life she knows so well. These paintings and sculptures are just a vision of what is beyond the visible. However, this “beyond” cannot be understood without the configurations of immediate elements.

A clear example of this may be found in the painting titled, “First Garden.” Suddenly, in a canvas profusely populated by figures and shapes, e are able to imagine the reality of a garden or of an interior, or even a synthesis of both spaces. This is suggested by a combination of elements belonging to each “ambience,” and by the floating quality of the human characters, dealt with a shadowy relief. They seem to be either trapped or evaporating in the “first garden,” as real as it is symbolic, where everything acquires and defines its own dimension, imposing its absolute over the whole.

The floating quality of persons and things dominating Elias’ world is even more profound in “Blue Dot”, where the relationships of the figures stemming from their isolation gives a different perspective to her human characters and their symbols, and where she playfully inserts the image of a frog shown in five of her works.

Elias is an artist who, although deeply playful, reveals an impressionistic imprint of her work. One example of expressionism, in its violent shapes and colors, appears in “Dream of Reality”, one of the paintings of the collection.
These works, a constant combination of reality and spontaneity of perception, are both strong and delicate. They can be deeply aggressive and kind at the same time. Exuberance is at both ends of the expression range. But whatever Elias’ approach to her subjects may be, her encounters and execution are a testimony of something that may forget, a tremendous joy of painting. This joy, no matter its character, gives a different meaning to her work.

By: Armando Alvarez Bravo
(Translation by: Elena A. Zayas)