Miriam Young is a creative director living in color in Roanoke.

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Everyone has his or her favorite style(s) of art. Long ago, I discovered the world of the Fauves, or "wild beasts," of the art world and fell in love. The Fauves rocked the art world with their wild colors and exuberant, expressive landscapes and portraits. Although they sprang on the scene in the early 1900s, they were the equivalent of being Jim Morrison in a Pat Boone world.

Artlex, not artless

A recent chat with my favorite art-smart buddy had me searching for the term in which a model's stance is uneven in weight and tilted at the hip or torso. "Antipasto," I said, ridiculously, then added, "no, not antipasto, something like that." This morning I remembered "contrapasto," then consulted a recent find, Artlex.com. "Contrapposto," it offered. Ah, good stuff. Had I searched Artlex.com on "pose" it would have come up in the results. If you've got an art term on the tip of your brain or want to learn more about some aspect of art, go search www.artlex.com.

The fauvism page

I then searched for fauvism on Artlex.com, and it offered a link to a very nice site created by Stephen Sander. Like my previous article "The Museum of Fred," this site is put together by someone who had an interest and wanted to share it with others (NICE art!) Check it out at www.sanderhome.com/Fauves/.

A light touch

Recently, a teacher at Grandin Court Elementary School crowed to me about their art teacher, Susan Light, and invited me to their student art show. Light had assigned specific scenes for the students in each grade level. One grade painted a tropical bird in a tree, another created pieces based upon a Matisse window scene, and an upper grade was assigned to render Mabry Mill.

The Mabry Mill artists made the sky and water blue and depicted the wood of the building orangey-brown, as the scene appeared to them. Then I saw Lauren's Mabry Mill scene, and it stopped me in my tracks.

Not your run-of-the mill Mill

Lauren's Mabry Mill

Lauren's Mabry Mill was vivid and dramatic — and very fauvish.

Lauren's work reminded me that art history repeats itself. An art cognoscente of France at the turn of the 20th century was accustomed to accomplished realism, soft and billowy impressionism and varying phases just outside of the norm. To go from exhibits of Renoir, Pisarro and Manet and then be confronted by paintings with green skin, red trees and rough approximations of subjects must have felt revolutionary. Even today, when red trees and blue dogs are celebrated, the courage to paint a red sky in a room of blue-sky painters is a bit of a revolution in itself. So, to Susan Light and the art appreciation shown at Grandin Court Elementary, I say "nice art."

And to Lauren, unwitting star of this column, keep listening to your inner drummer. Ask your parents if you can spend time exploring www.artlex.com. Something tells me you'll like it there.