Name: Sydney McKenna

Age: 57

Website: sydneymckenna.com

Title of Square: lone tree

About Me: Sydney McKenna holds a degree in Visual Arts from Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, and attended graduate studies in 1996 at the Cortona, Italy campus of the University of Georgia. After her return to the States she relocated to St. Augustine, where she opened the Sydney McKenna Gallery in 1997. Sydney's paintings are found in corporate, public and private collections, including Capital One's corporate collection of American art, (McLean, VA), The Museum of Florida Art, (Deland, Florida), Admiral Kevin Delaney (ret.), The Contrarian Group and the private collection of Patrice Munsel, retired opera star (Schroon Lake, NY).

About her own work, Sydney says: "I am fascinated with evaporation. Over the years of painting clouds I have grown to see quite a bit of symbolism in the water cycle. The fact that it can transform itself, rise into the heavens and move around the world through the skies, is somewhat miraculous; as if the clouds are the "spirit form" of water. They have come to remind me of the spark of life; a lifting of the physical, into the spiritual. I find that in studying clouds and striving to paint their ephemeral nature, I connect more to my own spirituality.

Imagination is.... visualizing how our soul connects to the world