East Bay Fine Art features fine art prints and original oil and digital paintings by photographer and painter, Usry Alleyne. Themes include flora, landscape, cityscape, street photography, portraits and other inspired subjects.
Works range in size from 8×10 Giclee prints to large posters, and from miniature oil paintings on wood to large works on canvas.
This site is currently under development so please check back soon for updates.
Thank you, Usry
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Single Blade
Sunset or sunrise photography always produces a rush of emotion because the I can see, feel, hear and smell the passage of time. In the later months of summer, this rush is further emphasized by the warm tan of drying grasses that blanket the ground.
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Alone at Sunset
In moments of solitude, I spend a lot of time thinking about other people and my relationships with them. Unlike dreams, there is no symbolism only a relay of facts, fears, fondness and unseen facial expressions.
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Scrapes & Scratches
When the ball gets trapped between the branches of a dried bush, the game doesn’t end. There is preemptive anxiety, then pain as I reach my arm through the branches and grasp the ball. There is pain as I pull my arm out and stinging as I brush the scratched areas before throwing the ball to continue the game. Astride the pain is the unceasing joy of playing the game. Joy is the anesthesia of non-traumatic pain.
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Cloud Blanket
Falling asleep with my head under my blanket is comforting. This blanket of clouds, seemingly pulled up over the bay at sunset, feels comforting. The gradient of light from bright to dark definitely contributes to that feeling. It is as if I’m being eased into night instead of the world suddenly going dark.
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Leaf Heart
The bright disc of the setting sun sits behind a heart-shaped leaf at the end of a dry branch. Other dry branches are above it, some sharp and some hocus.
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Precarious
Compared to the size of the universe, we are smaller than the atoms that make up our bodies. We live precariously on the outside of a sphere rotating at almost 1,000 miles an hour, flying through space at 67,000 mph. The energy for our daily lives originates within a giant spinning nuclear reactor located 93 million miles away.
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Seagull Sunset
At the edges of the world it is always twilight; perpetual, set up and sundown. There are no edges at the end of the world. There is nothing to fall off of and nothing to fall into. The end of every day here is the beginning of every day there. We are insects on the outside of a giant spinning ball with a heat lamp on one side.
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Transitions
I like the contrast of the sharp blades of grass in the foreground against the soft silhouettes in the background. The angular repetition of lines, the blurred archway around the sun and the transition from dark to light, are all very pleasing.
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People-set
It is mind altering to think that, every second of every day, the sun is simultaneously rising and setting, somewhere in the world. By degrees, there are 360 sunsets and sunrises per day. By human life, there are 7.8 billion sun ups and sun downs each day. Through all of these, the sun is stationary and we get up and lay down. Maybe we should call the ends of days, people-rise and people-set?
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Dark Pylons
Everything is black and orange at sunset when the wildfires are burning in California. The color and contrast intensified my sense of foreboding as I stood underneath the dilapidated structure taking the picture.
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Sun Flag
The sequential bands of light and dark are the appeal for me in this image. The dark bands of clouds at the top, the dark lines of the distant horizon, the light band of water in the center, the dark band at the edge of the shore, and the band of wet mud at the bottom come together to remind me of a stratified flag.
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Guard Rail Sun
I like this composition because the point of focus is out of focus. The tiny drops of dew on the grass are difficult to see in a small image on a screen, so I’m eager to make a large print.
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Needles in the Sun
Sometimes I don’t know what to say about something aesthetically pleasing, and this is one of those times. Contrasting elements drew me to this composition. I like the difference between the sharp pine needles and soft trees in the distance. The brightness of the orange sky against the dark foliage is also appealing.
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Oakland Savanna
From this distance, the Oakland docks remind me of an African savanna. The cranes look giraffes, probably because of their legs and long necks, and the distance between the trees remind me of images I’ve seen of trees on a savanna.
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Smoky Sun
On this day, smoke from California wildfires extended for miles into the Pacific Ocean. Normally, the orange glow of particulates in the sun, is that a distance, but today I felt as if I was in the sunset, instead of viewing it from afar.
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Copper Snake
The air is copper colored because particles from burning trees scatter all the other colors of light, leaving only this wonderful orange hue. The short term benefits of capitalism are seductive but are we burning the world to get them?
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Suns
I wonder what early human who lived by the ocean thought about when the sun vanished into the ocean, and then reappeared from the land in the opposite direction the next day? I wonder what crossed my mind when I first noticed this? Now humans in industrialized countries are first encouraged to think about taking a vacation when we search for answers about the sun.
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Burning Mist
I love watching western fog fires, as the sun falls below drifting clouds, on summer evenings in the East Bay. This brief but spectacular spectacle of burning mist is as mesmerizing as real flames.
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Winter Sun
As a 6 year old child in London’s East End, sunsets were a rarity because the sun was always shrouded in fog. As a 10 year old child in Guyana, sunsets signaled the disappointing end of playtime and arrival of mosquitoes. Brooklyn sunsets at 15, felt like English sunsets without mosquitoes. At 38, after months of slate gray winter skies, sunsets in Minnesota were glorious. Now living in the East Bay, only miles away from the ocean, sunsets are a mix of British fog and tropical blaze.
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Sky Ablaze
The energy of the sun is my thoughts, my body, my food, my clothing and even my car, so I understand why it was and is worshipped by so many. When absent for an extended period, my live is profoundly impacted by negativity. I become numb and no longer respond positivity to the world as is. The sun helps me to figuratively and physically navigate life.