Cris Qualiana’s paintings and drawings are like secret maps to the worlds in our head–worlds we didn’t even know existed. These are bright, dancing, singing, joyful images, and we want to spend time with them, to decipher them and follow where they lead. We want to take them with us. The lines and colors hum with the perfect tension, the perfect balance between delight and confusion, anticipation and regret. They are as perfectly human as dreams and memories: otherworldly and leading us home.

“For me, Art is a cry of joy that delivers me from anguish. This is an expulsive expression of excitement for a new beginning & simultaneously a grieving of the past, balancing in the now. Some compare my lines & colors to the fluidity of music. I think those people are musicians.” 

Qualiana, blends the humorous, whimsical, ethereal and cutting-edge, offering an invitation into worlds both strange and familiar.  

Early artistic prowess and promise led to a commission, at age twelve, to paint portraits of the Shah of Iran’s family. Impassioned curiosity and an insatiable wanderlust have been at the heart of Qualiana’s “travel education.” She took a brief foray into the the world of music, managing several bands and touring internationally, pit-stopping in Los Angeles to create and direct subsidiaries for Epitaph Records (the largest independent record label in the world) promoting over fifty bands. She designed promotional projects, ad campaigns, videos, and numerous record covers that can be found in music stores around the globe. While living on the road on tour, the World became Qualiana’s classroom.  Hotel rooms doubled as studios.  The people and places she encountered–distinctive scents, sights, sounds and flavors–filled her sketch-books. And Qualiana met herself, again and again, in various incarnations, through her painting and drawing. 

Her artwork, paintings and illustrations have been continuously exhibited in New York, Los Angeles,  London and Paris. 

See more of her work at qualiaanart.com and on Instagram.

Qualiana  has suffered with MS for many years. She deals with chronic pain, but has now eliminated medication and continues to search for natural ways to thrive with her challenges.