Little Cakes Little Gallery is delighted to present The More She Saw - The Less She Spoke A two part show of paintings by Cristina Toro Part One February 2nd - 18th, 2007 Part Two March 2nd - 18th, 2007 In her first solo show, Cristina Toro presents large, detailed acrylic paintings alongside smaller pieces depicting scenes from a yet unknown epic fairy tale. Little Cakes will be showing her work in two parts to accommodate the number of large paintings Cristina has finished. We hope to have her show feel like a narrative play with Act One, Intermission, and an Act Two. The paintings in "The More She Saw - The Less She Spoke" were created during the first year Cristina lived in the temperate North East. Having lived her whole life in tropical climates, she adjusted to her new surroundings by retreating into her new home, not unlike a sea creature retreating inside its shell, in order to make her secretive, personal paintings. She found comfort in surrounding herself with remnants of her childhood like the delicate vellum cards embossed and painted by her mother, her small collection of embroidered baby blankets and handkerchiefs, and old books on botany and science. At this time, Cristina also rediscovered her works of art made as a child and began to relate deeply to how she had rendered people, trees, and flowers. Much of this can been seen in the stylized simplicity she uses to paint some of the characters in her paintings that verge on standing alone as symbols and the way Cristina deliberately chooses to defy conventional perspective. This can been seen clearly in her larger works which at first trick many into believing that she is using collage to obtain the flattened effect of layered patterns when in fact she paints all of this by hand. Other influences that can be readily recognized are from the miniature paintings of India, Persia, and Turkey, The Unicorn Tapestries, and Chinese landscape paintings. Cristina Toro was born during the summer of 1983 on the small island of Puerto Rico. As a child she explored the island's rain forests and El Morro castle with her father. She learned letters, numbers, and the names of animals by climbing inside heavily collaged cardboard boxes filled with images carefully chosen by her mother that they discussed at length. She had many pets including countless canaries, a gray miniature schnauzer, and a small orchid whose flowers looked like tigers. At the age of ten Cristina and her family moved to the swampy and strange land of Florida where she resided until a year ago when she moved to the frozen north of New York State in order to invent new ways of living and making art. She enjoys growing vegetables in her garden during warmer months and singing to herself while playing hypnotic music on her autoharp. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Little Cakes Little Gallery - 625 East 6th Street #1B, NYC NY 10009 646-342-1056 / goodies@littlecakes.org / littlecakes.org Gallery hours are Friday through Sunday, 1pm to 6pm, and also by appointment. Little Cakes Little Gallery is located on East 6th Street between Avenue B and Avenue C. The closest subway stations are the F/V at Second Avenue and the L at First Avenue. Please note that the gallery will not be open during the last two weeks of February.