The artist's name, BIKA, was given to Paul Steinhauer as a boy growing up in the Caribbean island of Haiti. It means "aggie" the shooter in the game marbles. Because Paul's head when shaved for rainy season always gleamed brighter than those of his boyhood friends, he earned the nickname, "marble head or shooter head". In 1990 when Bika returned to Haiti after the tragic loss of his only child and daughter in a car accident, his brother suggested that he paint as therapy for healing from grief. A graphic designer for 25 years, Bika turned to fine art in order to celebrate the beautiful life and legacy left by his sixteen year old who loved art and dancing. Since 1990 Bika has enlarged his prolific genres, becoming an acclaimed Canadian Caribbean artist.

Bika paints in the school of beauty. A stunning colorist and folklorist, Bika, muses and moves from the inner spirituality of his religious Judeochristian heritage into our world as though on a mission to inspire wonder, playful intensity, profound technical balance, and courage to make our world a better place, an altar of creative ambition upon which the Divine joins with the human. Bika owes much of his sourcing and expression to his beloved soulmate, his wife, Judy, a musician and artistic partner for more than forty years.

Bika has earned a Doctorate of Ministry in Religious Fine Arts. He is currently completing his Ph.D. in the Spirituality of Creative Presence expressed through David, King of Israel and Yeshua Jesus, whom Bika believes to be the messianic voice for all eternity. Here are statements made by collectors, curators, art directors in galleries, art dealers and educators about Bika's work:

"Bika beckons us to visualize with a child's unabashed sense of life and joy." Geryl

-Owen, private collector

"He paints with life, light and a spirituality which cannot be taught or copied. He’s  the kind of artist who comes along once in a hundred years"
 

- Virginia Macharini, Curator, Ph.D. Fine Arts.

"His work, his colors, his vision has such soul and elan that hope and a spiritual reverence carries us all. He belongs in the Louvre, in Paris, in museums as a voice for the delightful in life."

                                                                   -Artist at Celebration of Fine Arts 2007.

"'Bika, has not not been contaminated by the commercial, the decor art field, or the mad rush for money, fame, and copying of other ideas."

                                                      -Gallery owners in Carmel, California.

"His imagination and execution of inner vision is a subconscious call to elevate our senses. He has no idea what his work does for others. He must paint or die"

                                                 -Renowned Artist and Curator, Nana-Dicta Graves

BIKA explains himself as an artist in these terms. " I deplore the superficiality and elitism of most academic graduate art programs, institutions, museums, and other snobbish circles where some of the most depressing, dehumanizing, even demonic works are hailed as genius. There is a sterilism, a neutering of moral beauty in the visual arts for our fledgling century. The immoral delusion that we master our own destiny and are free to voice the horrible that lurks within us as though this is glorious reality will be our termination as those originally created in the image of God, the model for perfection and purely holy glory. It is the coward who throws imagination into chaos and hellish torment as those a hero of the macabre. My aim and passion, hopefully, is to catch the gleam of delight in the eye of God, the good, the awesomely majestic and truthful. Eternal art is that which calls forth the most exquisite in human experience and refuses to debase our absolute uniqueness in the universe by worshipping and idolizing nothing except our worst selves. If for only an instant, one person is caught up in the wonder of "wow" in such a way that a sense of aesthetic hopefulness, a surge of rapt joy seeks acknowledgment, then I have only to be thankful, nothing more. This moment is priceless and can never be commercialized or bartered. Moral art lasts forever. Immoral art disintegrates and disappears. The ultimate art critic and collector is our Creator."

BIKA FACT SHEET

Sales to date ... $275,000 Number of collectors... 52

Exhibits and Galleries

Celebration of Fine Arts... Scottsdale, Arizona ... 10 weeks live painting
Carmel, California... live painting, four downtown galleries
Palm Springs, California
Lake Louise, Alberta
Edmonton, Alberta
Center Club, Edmonton, Alberta
Winspear, Edmonton, Alberta
Tokyo, Japan
Yokohama, Japan
Luxembourg
Canmore, Alberta
San Jose, California
Fresno, California
Merced, California

Works currently and exclusively available at PICTURE THIS GALLERY,
Sherwood Park, Alberta

BIKA TEACHES ART, CONDUCTS ART THERAPY SESSIONS AS A
"DIPLOMATS" IN THIS FIELD OF SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT.

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