The Idyllwild Arts Academy Visual Arts Department held an opening for the first of the winter semester’s three senior shows last Friday. The theme, “Solitude,” drew varied and surprising responses from the artists. Works expressed the positive and negative aspects of solitude; peace and freedom to dream, but also mortality, vulnerability and disability. Eight seniors…

Images captured on canvas by renowned Idyllwild artist Darcy Gerdes are, quite simply, breathtaking. Her talent expresses itself in an array of vivid wildlife scenes conveyed in acrylic, rivaling in scope the perennial beauty of nature herself. They somehow appear both magnified and distant. Visionary wisdom inspires her soft brushstrokes and richly layered dimensional color,…