Surreal Vision

While many artists have no formal training, Lorie Ofir has heavyweight credentials — Parsons New School University, Florence University of the Arts and the University of Florida — and it shows in her eye-catching, discussion-inspiring work. As an artist based in Miami, she lives on flat land, but paints mountains. Why? Because she has the strongest emotional connections to places that are physically far away. This dichotomy has moved her toward her current series of paintings and collages titled Hybrid Landscapes. Each piece is an impossible world sitting on a horizon that one can never reach, an overlapping of varying colors, objects, weathers, textures and terrains that only exist together in dramatic fantasy. It is a vivid exploration of the elsewhere fused with the familiar in large-scale landscapes of undulating sand dunes, stars of broken glass, infinite mountains of fabric, underwater raindrops and more; LorieOfir.com.