Close-Up Talk Radio spotlights renowned artist Alice Asmar

Burbank, CA – Describing the art of Alice Asmar, Chilean poet and Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda wrote, “Your work is so much beauty, like painted with my old and best dreams.” Asmar’s art does not imitate life, it expresses life. Today her works can be found in thousands of public and private collections throughout the United States, Asia and Europe, including the Smithsonian Institution.

Asmar is the author of forthcoming Dance to the Great Spirit: An Artist’s Sacred Journey into American Indian Ceremony, the conclusion to her inspiring studies of the Southwestern Indians of New Mexico. The book combines Asmar’s inspiration from nature with a deep respect for Southwestern Indian culture. Over 150 of her paintings, diagrams, poetry and prose are included in the book. Its cover features an exciting rainbow dancer in a field of purple iris.

“Fortunately, I need not be a bird to paint a bird, nor do I need to be an Indian to paint Indians,” says Asmar. "I was born with a brush in my mouth. It was a calling. It chose me; I didn’t choose it. And when I try to move away from it, it’s like moving away from breathing.

Asmar is known for her unusual approach to the visual realm, using varying shapes and sizes of objects to blend with imagination. Asmar’s art is inspired by her spirituality. She often reads the Bible for inspiration and is a lector for three different churches. She understands painting as a prayer.

Asmar’s passion, she says, is to “transform paint and words into spiritual qualities that can be shared by all races and nations in a universal language of the heart.” Dance to the Great Spirit is dedicated “to all seven billion brothers and sisters.”

“If you’re going to communicate,” says Asmar, “communicate with everyone.”