Alyssa di Edwardo of West Palm Beach is the featured artist in a solo exhibit at the The Palm Beach County Cultural Council, now through July 7.

A self-taught artist, she has spent a great deal of time in New York City studying the works of the major artists of the 20th century primarily Joan Mitchell, Willem de Kooning and Georgia O’Keefe.

When she visited Florida in the 1970s, she was mesmerized by the beauty of the ocean and lush landscape. Plans to attend Art Student League were shelved and the young di Edwardo headed south to Florida where she continued to evolve as a painter incorporating and translating the rich-hued landscape of the northeast and her new surroundings onto the canvas as her rhythmic style emerged.

“My work, a process of osmosis onto the canvas, is largely based on all of my experiences through all the senses,” she says. “It’s very emotional and my paintings are done bypassing thought. Not that they aren’t intellectual, but they are not premeditated, edited or censored.”

In 2002 her first one-person show at SoHo Arts South Gallery in Palm Beach gained her recognition as an abstract expressionist artist. Her large-scale, highly gestural paintings have been presented at major art exhibits and museums and are part of many private art collections nationally.

Located in the historic Robert J. Montgomery Building at 601 Lake Avenue in downtown Lake Worth, the new home of the Palm Beach County Cultural Council is open to the public Tuesdays through Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, please visit www.palmbeachculture.com.