Passage by Calie Durant

Acrylic on canvas
24" h x 24" w - unframed

Calie Durant is an abstract painter whose work bridges a lifelong dedication to visual communication with a sustained commitment to a practice shaped through layered inquiry and revision. She studied graphic design in art school before earning her BFA with a major in painting. Raised in Hawai‘i, she was drawn early to the relationships between color, form, and atmosphere, sensitivities that would later inform both her design career and her studio practice.

Before turning fully toward painting, Calie worked in branding and advertising as an art director, designer, and strategist in New York and San Francisco. She led creative teams and crafted cohesive visual systems across web, mobile, and print. During this time, she partnered with renowned clients including Pottery Barn, Williams-Sonoma, Ogilvy & Mather, and Landor Associates. This background refined her approach to composition, structure, and visual clarity, elements that now underpin the disciplined yet expansive nature of her abstract work.

In 2021, Calie moved back to O‘ahu with her husband and two children. She now paints from her home studio in Honolulu, where a sense of rhythm, openness, and spatial awareness informs the ongoing evolution of her practice.

Passage explores the continuous movement between one moment and the next. Layers of blue, turquoise, and deep ocean tones sweep across the surface, creating a sense of shifting currents, crossing paths, and movement through open water. Intricate patterns emerge and recede within the layers, suggesting forms carried forward by forces both visible and unseen.

The painting reflects the transitions we experience in life, those spaces between where we have been and where we are going. The overlapping forms create a sense of movement and possibility, evoking the idea that a passage is not simply a journey from one place to another, but a process of becoming shaped by everything encountered along the way.

Passage invites us to embrace the movement between moments, trusting that each transition carries us toward something new. - Calie Durant