‘Ian’s Eye’ by Dana Donkle
On view in the main gallery of the Alliance for the Arts through September 30 is Storm Stories, a visual art exhibit that features 53 works of art by Florida artists in reaction to Hurricane Ian. Dana Donkle’s acrylic painting, Ian’s Eye, was chosen as the work that best represents the sentiment of the exhibition.
“This piece captures the experience of watching the storm’s intensifying colors on the weather maps as it made its way to our city,” Donkle remarks in her Artist Statement. “My friends and I who evacuated would tirelessly watch The Weather Channel, as clips of floods, wind and horror ravaged 
our city.”
Like most other evacuees, even though she was safely out of Ian’s path, Dana experienced a high degree of anxiety not knowing what was happening back home.
“While waiting for the ‘all clear’ to return to Fort Myers, I created this piece to process difficult emotions, expressed 
through intense brushstrokes, palette knife scraping, and the use of intense colors,” Dana amplifies. “This period of ambiguity concerning the fate of friends who suffered housing loss and my own reintegration into work represents the crying eye found in the middle of the piece.”
The AFTA will host a closing reception for the exhibition from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. on September 28th, which marks the 
one-year anniversary of the devastating Category 4 storm. However, a number of events will take place at the Alliance over the course of the exhibition.
September 2, 2023.
About the Author
Tom Hall is both an amateur artist and aspiring novelist who writes art quest thrillers. He is in the final stages of completing his debut novel titled "Art Detective," a story that fictionalizes the discovery of the fabled billion-dollar Impressionist collection of Parisian art dealer Josse Bernheim-Jeune, thought by many to have perished during World War II when the collection's hiding place, Castle de Rastignac in southern France, was destroyed by the Wehrmacht in reprisal for attacks made by members of the Resistance operating in the area. A former tax attorney, Tom holds a bachelor's degree as well as both a juris doctorate and masters of laws in taxation from the University of Florida. Tom lives in Estero, Florida with his fiancee, Connie, and their four cats.