Three years ago, Michael David and artist partner Scott Browning decided to launch Fine Arts Workshop, a studio for artists wishing to study under the direction of David, whose artistic vision landed him in some of the most coveted museums and universities in the world. Unlike the traditional art school set, these artists are finding their way back to art after meeting life’s detours that made it difficult for them to pursue an earlier career. The result is a group cured by maturity and experience powerfully reflected in their work. Add to the formula the spirit of the South and the adrenaline of reconnecting with a source impulse to paint, and these artists have produced work that represents the beginning of a new vernacular in Southern artistry.

Bill Lowe Gallery has long been recognized as the South’s pre-eminent contemporary art gallery. For nearly a quarter century, it has sanctioned a vigorous advocacy of potent alternative voices in art. This sensitivity, coupled with a highly developed understanding of the intuitive and "receptive" - both characteristic of “female energy“ - perfectly casts this gallery as the conduit through which these voices are presented.

South Korean artist Jeong Han Yun fuses Asian and Western paper-making techniques to create monumental works of extraordinary texture and vibrant color. His material is most often extracted from the bark and flowers of the ancient Dhak tree, native to Southeast Asia. Jeong states that he “feels his heart beat when Dhak trees are found” and is “appetized when the barks are peeled off.” Such is the sensual and psychological connection that he feels to the material from which he makes his work. In harvesting and repurposing this organic material, Jeong’s feelings, thoughts and movements are stored in the cellulose of the tree barks. His spirit is regenerated within the fibers of the work, inviting the viewer into his intimate connection with the timeless essence of the natural world.

Choon Hyang Yun has been working with traditional Asian paper since 1985. In that time, she has gained international recognition for her ambitious advancement of the medium. Her works redefine the tenants of Asian papermaking by expanding them into monumental scale characterized by strong expressionistic undercurrents. The word “painting” lacks in description when defining Choon Hyang Yun’s artworks. Instead of working merely with paints and brushes, she has created extraordinary textures from the pulp of the ancient Dhak tree. While her work possesses characteristics of traditional painting, their organic textures and colors stay true to their arboreal origins. Choon’s mastery of this mesmerizing material expresses an instinctive impulse embodied through abstract, organic form.

Tornadoes, floods, tsunamis, hurricanes, coal mining catastrophes and terrorist attacks have become a part of the world’s daily conversation, filmed and reported by a 24-hour news cycle or uploaded to YouTube by people on the ground. Dial, like the rest of us, has witnessed these disasters through the filter of the television screen, inundated with images of flooded homes, stranded families, and fields strewn with debris. These snapshots of devastation, formatted like electronic postcards, have always been fertile material for Dial and have manifested themselves in paintings and drawings over the past 20 years. The inevitable visual imprints left by these images are re-worked by Dial into compositions that tell the more complex stories of individual lives affected, the unequal hardships that the poor are forced to endure, and the role of the artist as documentarian.

The collection of photos spanning Greg Lotus' 20-year career draw inspiration from classical paintings, international travels and life experiences. Lotus has developed his own evocative way of using light and shadow, playing with angles and composition to enhance the graphic quality of his images. "Aspiration and Artifice: The Constructed Visage" captures the human desire to move beyond the common experience, often resulting in a constructed exaggeration of natural beauty. Nature is a recurrent motif in his photography; wild surroundings and exotic animals link the rarefied atmosphere of the fashion industry to the organic beauty of the natural world.

South Korean artist Jung Kwang Sik is internationally recognized for his masterful fusion of painting and sculpture. Utilizing beds of carved and scratched granite, which he then paints, his works suggest sweeping landscapes viewed from an aerial perspective. These poetic works have an uneven surface; they are sculpture in relief. His grinding work has a limitation in direction and usually achieves patterns of hexagons. The addition of paint to the crowns of these hexagons lends an architectural element to the piece, emblematic of cities, villages and roads.