Upper Lake >> Cris Qualiana can create art with virtually any material. In her lifelong art career — she began taking commissions at the age of 12 — she’s been highly flexible, using whatever is on hand to create her work. Her most unusual tools of creation have been nail polish and an incense stick.
“It turned out to be one of the most striking pieces I’ve done,” Qualiana said.
This innovative attitude was partially born of necessity. For most of her life Qualiana worked in the music industry. She spent many hours on the road and in the recording studio. As a crew member she toured with a number of groups, including Stomp. The popular show stayed in all the best hotels, for a week or more at a time.
Qualiana had to pack light. She traveled with a bag of art supplies, spot remover and a screw gun. When she checked into her hotel room, one of the first things she did was take the artwork off the walls. Then she’d flip them over and render her own painting on the back. Before she left, she would return the art to the walls, the hotel staff none the wiser. “You could say I have my art hanging in many of the best hotels in the world,” she said, “they just don’t know it.”
And Qualiana’s influences are as broad as her materials. She’s inspired by everything in her life, from fear and joy, to sorrow and strength. She feels a deep need to express those emotions, and once she picks up a brush, the work flows from her hands as it creates itself. “Call it God or muses or whatever you feel comfortable with,” she said, “but I know I’m just a small part of the creation, especially when it’s good.”
For many years, she felt the process of expression was more important than the finished work. So she trashed her paintings. “I was afraid the critiques of the end painting would influence my creativity so I would throw it away as not to be dissected,” she said.
But then she met actor Steven Spears in a pub in Brighton, England. When he learned of what she was doing, he admonished her. She had a gift, he said, and she had no right to hide it away. She had to share it with the world, he went on. “It is not yours to keep,” he concluded. “Even the ugly stuff could help some poor sod out.”
Spears’s words left quite the impression on her. From that moment on, Qualiana quit throwing away her art.
It may not be a surprise that Qualiana forwent a formal education. She just didn’t want to box herself in, or be influenced too far in one direction or another. However, some people are intimidated by her wide range of work. When Susan Feiler, Lake County Wine Studio proprietor, praised Qualiana’s variety, it was the first time a gallery had given her such a reaction.
Naturally, Feiler invited Qualiana to show her work at the studio as October’s artist of the month.
Growing up in Lockport, New York, Qualiana was heavily influenced by her father, a barber with his own painting studio behind the barbershop. Qualiana began by mimicking her dad, but by her teens she’d moved onto portraits. “I found people’s eyes fascinating and would do the portraits just to be able to draw the depth in someone’s eyes,” she said.
One of Qualiana’s more memorable commissions was for the sister of the Shah of Iran, who fled to the states after her brother was excommunicated. She requested a painting of her mother and father together, since it was forbidden for them to appear side by side in a photograph. When Qualiana finished, the woman was so impressed she hired Qualiana to paint three more pictures for family overseas.
All was going well with Qualiana’s art until the morning of May 7, 2012. When she woke, she was unable to use her right hand. By the time she was diagnosed with MS, she had lost all function in both hands and her left leg. She was terrified. There was a definite possibility that she would never regain use of her hands. “Yet there was never a moment when I thought, ‘Oh no, I can’t make art now.’ I’d find a way,” she recalled. “My thinking was, if I had to throw myself like a fish on the canvas I would and I would never stop making art.”
Although her hands are no longer without function, Qualiana’s diagnoses continues to affect her work. She starts each day exhausted and takes painting one moment at a time, with plenty of breaks for rest and ice. She finds great strength and inspiration from her husband, Keith Basham. A writer, scientist and comedian, Basham is an everyday system of support for Qualiana, both in life and art.
There will be an opening reception for Qualiana at the Lake County Wine Studio in Upper Lake tonight from 5-8 p.m. Another reception takes place Saturday, 4-7 p.m. Qualiana’s work will be on displayed at the venue, located at 9505 Main St., until the end of the month.
Jennifer Gruenke can be reached at 900-2019.
