Dušanka Kralj is an abstract painter whose work has been exhibited nationally and featured in numerous publications over the past two decades. Her paintings have earned awards in juried exhibitions in New York, San Francisco, and Seattle, including recognition as a finalist in The Artist Magazine’s 27th Annual Art Competition, where three of her works were honored. Kralj’s art has appeared in Unique Insights 2016, Journeys 2017, Visual Journeys: Art of the 21st Century, and The Art of Layering: Making Connections. She was one of twenty-nine artists selected for the California Cooperative Art Project at the State Capitol, and her 2013 solo exhibition at Coos Art Museum resulted in the sale of seventeen of eighteen works. In 2016, La Crema Estate at Saralee Vineyard in Windsor, California, added several of her paintings to its permanent collection and commissioned additional pieces for its tasting room. Born in Slovenia and raised in an artistic family that emigrated to the U.S., Kralj studied at the University of Wisconsin and began her career as a graphic artist in the audiovisual and photography industry in the 1970s. In 1992, she devoted herself fully to painting in the Abstract Expressionist tradition, studying under Scottish-born artist Paul Gardner and later with Judith Hale, a student of Helen Frankenthaler. Her travels throughout Europe, particularly in France and Italy, deepened her study of art history and abstraction. She now paints full-time between the Pacific Northwest and Southern California. “I paint in the non-objective style as it frees me to be immediate, direct, and in the moment. Abstraction allows me to transcend representation and communicate what is intangible—concepts and sensations. Multiple layers developed over time lend the paintings their complexity, subtlety, and depth. The process becomes physical as layers are textured, deconstructed, and renewed. Underlayers emerge as a metaphor for connecting past and present, until the painting becomes whole.”