FLORIDA KEYS' INTENSE NATURAL BEAUTY INSPIRES AND SOOTHES ISLAMORADA ARTIST

Islamorada artist Stacie Krupa, a native Floridian, did her time in the Northeast before discovering the lifestyle in the Keys suits her - and her art - far better.

"I am very inspired by wildlife, ocean and fish," says Krupa, who has made her home in the Keys for 10 years. "I painted fish when I was in the Northeast, and people thought I was weird."

Originally from Orlando, Krupa studied art in Pennsylvania, Maryland and New York before opening a gallery in Winter Park, Fla. In 1997, she decided to move to the Florida Keys.

"I came here because if you're going to live in Florida, you should live in the Keys," she says. "Moving here also gave me the opportunity to bring the mentality and the essence of fine art from the Northeast to the Keys."

When she first arrived in the Keys, Krupa used a limited palette of colors - gray, white and brown - which gave her work an industrial feel. Once she embarked on earning her masters degree, which she completed in the Keys, she became interested in creating abstract expressionist images.

"I noticed the Keys artists' use of color and figured out in graduate school I wanted to do this with acrylics," she says. "Rather than just seeing the image and its shapes, I started seeing the colors around me."

Krupa, whose background includes a degree in psychology, knows well the affect color can have on a person's life. She credits the colors in the Florida Keys with determining her moods. The island environment, coupled with the colors, she says, provides a source of self-therapy for her.

"As a very energetic and hyper person, the intensity of the natural beauty here serves both to soothe and inspire me," Krupa states.

Krupa's art, showcased at her gallery at mile marker (MM) 83 oceanside in Islamorada, depicts ocean life as well as animals and people, and incorporates iridescent colors layered with drips and sparkles. She works in oils, oil sticks and acrylics.

Krupa encourages visitors to the gallery to come in, ponder and converse about the pieces, and watch her as she works.

Her art, influenced by the abstract expressionist movement of the 1930s and 1940s, can also be seen at the new Redbone Gallery, MM 81 oceanside behind the Green Turtle Inn Restaurant.

Although Krupa likes to venture to the Florida mainland, after a short time away she longs to come home to her familiar surroundings.

As strong as her passion for the Keys is, however, it can't eclipse her passion for art. She first explored painting when she was 3 years old, and began painting professionally at age 12.

Art has served as a major confidence builder and a constant in her life, something she could rely on, yet change if she felt the need to.

"In other words, I could never mess it up," Krupa says. "Where people and life disappoint, my art has never disappointed me, and this has always driven me to paint."

In fact, art is so important to Krupa that her paintings become like human beings to her.

"Sometimes I yell at my paintings," she confesses. "I speak to them as if they were alive - and they are always a male or female when I am done, almost as if they were a sibling."

Siblings or not, the paintings of this creative Keys "sister" are well worth discovering.