Atlanta based artist, Pavlina Alea’s work captures fleeting moments that she perceives to be of the utmost beauty. She is fascinated by unusual relationships and the interplay between mundane objects and the intense optic distortions caused by water and ice. Alea explores this relationship in her artistic practice in order to examine the presence of humanity within the uncontrollable context of nature. Her representational depictions are contrasted through naturally formed abstraction and surrealism. As light and reflection are set in conversation with the movement of water, Alea’s artwork is both calming and unsettling. The reflections she paints in her work change shape and distort reality into a liminal alternate universe. "My swimmers are metaphorical monuments of a composite deity, they're not just images of people exercising. These portraits and figures are larger than life and frozen in time, and to me, they are beyond human. [...] In these faces and gestures, I express the process of birth, life, and everything that happens in between." — Pavlina Alea