Artist Sheryl Budnik is devi­at­ing from her nor­mally idyl­lic sea and sun­set themes to con­front uncom­fort­able truths about nat­ural dis­as­ters in the world.

Alongside her calm scenes, she also has paint­ings of nat­ural dis­as­ters such as vol­ca­noes, earth­quakes, and for­est fires. Her art dis­play “Chaos & Calm” will be in the Rankin Art Center until Jan. 21.

Her art takes view­ers on a jour­ney from paint­ings of pic­turesque lake scenes to fiery vol­ca­noes. Through this con­trast, she draws atten­tion to the fragility, as well as beauty, of our world.

Carrie Weis, the Rankin Art Gallery direc­tor, was ini­tially drawn to her art­work because of its unique per­spec­tive and tech­ni­cal skill.

“Part of my goal here is to always have exhibits that are unique and unusual and some­thing that we haven’t shown in the past,” Weis said. “Her work is dif­fer­ent in the sense that it’s kind of a clas­si­cal style of paint­ing but it has a real con­tem­po­rary theme. The con­cept behind her work is all about the envi­ron­men­tal issues we’re deal­ing with in today’s world.”

Tamira Owens, FSU fresh­man in inter­na­tional busi­ness and study abroad, was inter­ested in the way Budnik was able to evoke dif­fer­ent feel­ings through her paint­ings. “You could just feel the emo­tion in it,” Owens said.

In a pre­pared state­ment about why art is impor­tant, Weis said, “Art is a lan­guage, not much dif­fer­ent than any writ­ten lan­guage; it pro­vides a voice for a large num­ber of peo­ple who are visual thinkers, who are inter­ested in see­ing and expe­ri­enc­ing some­thing new.”

Louis Kostielney, FSU junior in polit­i­cal sci­ence edu­ca­tion, enjoyed the exhibit. “I thought it was really col­or­ful; I liked the theme of calm ver­sus chaos.” He liked that one of the paint­ings, Cargo Ship Sinking, was some­what ambigu­ous. “It’s not exactly a clear pic­ture; you have to fig­ure it out a bit,” Kostielney said.

“She’s blend­ing some art his­tory with some mod­ern day issues,” Weis said. “They’re beau­ti­ful to look at, but then they’re also jux­ta­posed with this issue of things that are really ugly.”