NEGATIVE / POSITIVE EXHIBITION AT THE TOOKER GALLERY

There is no visual stamp that defines my work. Each project has its own face, its own language, its own way of revealing itself. What connects my work is not how it looks, but how it transforms.
With a background in Hermetic Philosophy and Alchemy, I am drawn to the space where one thing becomes another—where destruction can become creation, failure can become discovery, and what appears negative always transforms into a positive.

My work is not premeditated. Life enters my studio.

An accident.
A failure.
A loss.
A damaged negative.
A wrong turn.
A sleepless night.
A ridiculous Craigslist purchase.
And then the magic unfolds into play.

Flash & Failure. The Untitled 8 Days of Mona Lisa. Bleached. Cracked Ribs. Age of Beauty. “It’s Craigslist, Toots!” These are among the projects born from this process that will be on exhibition at the Tooker Gallery. Each project began somewhere unexpected. Each became something else. What might have appeared to be a problem, a mistake, or a negative circumstance became the raw material for discovery.

For me, the movement between negative and positive is more than a method of making art. It is a way of looking at life. In order to understand the process, the transformation of thought must come within. The world can then be seen as a constant movement between negative and positive. What one person experiences as negative may become the beginning of an entirely different understanding for someone else. Meaning is not always inherent in what happens to us; sometimes, it emerges through what we do with it.

When life places me in a position where I feel like a victim of circumstances, I try
to ask myself a different question:

What has been given to me here? What is this trying to reveal?

The universe does not always deliver its gifts beautifully wrapped.
Sometimes they arrive as failure.
Sometimes as damage.
Sometimes as loss.
Sometimes as something we never asked for.

I have learned to look at these moments not simply as obstacles, but as possibilities
—as invitations to see differently, think differently, and discover something I could
not have imagined before. Without disruption, without the tension between
opposing forces, the mind can settle into familiar patterns. It is often the
interruption that makes discovery possible.

In my daily life, I am not interested in immediately rejecting these moments or
forcing them into a predetermined outcome. I want to enter them. Turn them over.
Look beneath the surface. Play with what is there. Discover what else they might
contain.

This is where my work begins.
Not in perfection, but in transformation.
Not in controlling the outcome, but in allowing life to participate.
Not in knowing the answer, but in remaining open to the possibility that the
unexpected may become the answer.

Negative becomes positive.
Failure becomes discovery.
Life becomes the material.

Cynthia Karalla

Exhibition: November 7, 2026 / 2 – 7pm
Tooker Gallery195 Front Street, Newburgh, New York 12550
On the Hudson River
718-704-6954 | 718-614-1935