Organic. Unique. Contemporary. Classic. Combined, each adjective perfectly sums up the work of Cynthia Duff. Her wooden canvases literally pop off of the wall. Each piece undulates with a perfect combination of form, color and composition. Duff's work presents a wondrous experience of discovering what can be accomplished when an artist steps outside of the box and literally bends their medium in new directions.Working with wood seemed to come by accident for Duff. Years ago, she was invited to display her work in a show titled “Bent.” Duff searched far and wide for a manufacturer or a DIY method to bend canvas into a rounded form. Without the means to manipulate canvas in such a manner, she turned to wood. Today, she has gained worldwide acclaim for creating a series of work that adds an incredible amount of natural beauty to the spaces it decorates. Duff says, “I start my work with this raw magnificent inspiration. I visualize it... I become one with it. I use music, color, subject, shape and line to help me orchestrate my art. Once the work has started it follows a journey of its own. My inner self must be allowed to flow and create. I am often amazed at the results."Her work begins with picking a flat piece of birch wood. She carefully mixes a combination of acrylics and wood stains to both add color to the piece and enhance the beautiful wood grains that are already inherent in it. Duff’s use of layered gold leaf provides an elegant and stunning shine to the top layers of each contemporary painting. Fracturing, a technique she developed to highlight the intricacy of her work, allows for color blocking to come in swirling, seemingly dancing, patterns. In her landscapes, the technique allows her to present different parts of the day within the same painting by slicing the composition into sections. In her abstracts, the colors contrast and blend beautifully throughout the piece.While most artists would be content to stop with a perfectly composed painting, Duff’s work is only part done. She hand shapes each piece of painted wood into three-dimensional, rounded curves. As viewer’s walk past her work different parts of the painting appear. Looking at each piece changes dramatically depending on the angle from which it is viewed. The curves mimic the shape of the tree trunk upon which she has painted, breathing life back into the tree. With her home state of Colorado being so outdoorsy, the wooden canvases speak to the pristine environment in which Duff resides.