Featured Artist Chalda Maloff

Artist Chalda Maloff portrays the energy and optimism that inspire a meaningful life. Her abstract imagery, created with digital software, reflects insights gleaned from close observation of nature. See more by visiting her website.

 

 

I feel intimately connected to the smallest fragile life form, such as a minnow, a bug in my garden, or a sapling. My aim is to create artworks that reflect their transitory existence. They are so precarious and yet have an enduring commitment to a vibrant life.

 

 

An artist for as long as I can remember, I sold my first two watercolors at the age of ten to a movie studio. I majored in Art History at University of California, Berkeley, and spent a wonderful semester in Florence, Italy, studying Renaissance art with Boston University.

 

 

Ironically, a pivotal moment in my art career occurred in the early seventies when I was a graduate student in Computer Science at Berkeley. A professor was giving a couple of us a ride into San Francisco and apologetically had to make a quick stop at Xerox Park research lab on the way.

 

 

It turned out this lab was working on some of the very earliest graphical user interfaces and art software. At that time, computers were not fast enough. They didn’t have the processing capability to be a reasonable tool for the type of art I wanted to create. But I was intrigued with the possibilities.

 

 

A couple of decades after that visit to the lab, the first commercial art software became available. I had a period of health troubles when I didn’t have the mobility to get up, put on dirty clothes, and set up my easel. My husband surprised me with an art software package so I could paint from my bed on a laptop.

 

 

Someone in that software company had a sense of humor, because the disk came in an actual one-gallon paint can. When the lid was pried open, there was a quick scent of paint.

 

 

Using the computer as an art tool unleashed endless potential in my creative process. The ability to make marks, undo and save intermediate versions, helped me to create stronger, more well-conceived compositions.

 

 

Beyond that, this tool helped me build upon stylistic features that were already a part of my process. I had been experimenting with visual effects suggesting a push-and-pull sensation, evocative of the pulse or rhythm of life. This endeavor was enhanced with art software, and the ability to counterpose virtual media. For example, I could mix apparent watercolor with crayon, or oils with ink.

 

 

I feel community with the Renaissance Artists I studied in Italy. They explored the spectrum of possibilities with media which were at that time new and evolving. I take pleasure in working on detail, and I relish interjecting tiny visual elements which will probably be overlooked on first viewing, and hopefully discovered much later in delighted surprise.

 

 

To be open to possibility, fully aware, and yet in tune with the most ephemeral aspects of our being, is where I find meaning in life. These are the makings I bring to my work.

 

Artist Chalda Maloff invites you to follow her on Instagram and Facebook.

 

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