San Diego, CA -- (ReleaseWire) -- 02/06/2007 --The San Diego Visual Art's Network and SanDiegoArtist.com has established the San Diego Art Prize which is given annually to three established and three emerging artists who have exhibited outstanding achievement in the field of Visual Arts. The Prize recipients will receive a cash grant and an exhibition at the L Street Gallery in the Downtown Omni Hotel. Each exhibition will pair an established artist with an emerging artist. The final exhibition will run from June 2007 - September 2007 and will feature work by all recognized recipients of the SD ART PRIZE.

The third exhibition in the series, Domestic Deviation, Featuring Works by Ernest Silva and May Ling Martinez will begin March 3rd with an opening reception from 7pm - 9pm at the L Street Gallery and will be on view through May 21, 2007. The psychoanalytical term Object Relations Theory in many ways defines the work of both artists. This theory states that the building blocks of how people experience the world emerge from their relationship to loved and hated objects. Both use images as a visual language to tell a story. The viewer then interprets the story based on their own frame of reference. Each image invokes a different dialogue within the individual that is significant to his or her life.

Ernest Silva received a BFA from the University of Rhode Island in 1971 and an MFA from Tyler School of Art in 1974. Since 1972, his work has been shown in over 45 one person shows and over 150 group shows. In 1989, he was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Painting and in 1995; he was the artist in residence at the National Workshops for Arts and Crafts, Copenhagen, Denmark, known as Gammel Dok. Mr. Silva has been commissioned to construct several public art projects in the San Diego/Tijuana region. His public projects include a permanent installation at the Children's Museum of San Diego, 1995; the Casa de la Cultura, Tijuana, 1994; and the Centro Cultural Tijuana. Mr. Ernest Silva has been a Professor of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego since 1979. Silva’s recent paintings and sculptures are being shown at the Patricia Correia Gallery in Santa Monica, CA June 24 - July 29, 2006.

“Ernest Silva is a consummate painter, sculptor and installation artist with an individual vision and distinctive vocabulary. His work is an expression of mankind’s eternal longings and fears, and in his world human beings are restless souls on a lonely journey through a sometimes, dark environment filled with risk and danger,” said Mary Beebe, director of the Stuart Collection.

May-ling Martinez was born and raised in Puerto Rico, but has made San Diego her home. She is a recent graduate with a MFA degree in sculpture from San Diego State University in 2005. In 1996 she received a bachelor's degree in communications and visual arts from Sacred Heart University, in Puerto Rico. Her work consists of mixed media installations, sculptures and collages that function as triggers to evoke memories.

"For a while now I have been collecting and working with home related elements and objects. I’ve always found comfort and humor in them and in the general idea of the house. Philosophers, psychoanalysts and poets have perceived the House, or the home as a magical place full of contradictory wonder. That can function as a structure forming device,” said May-Ling.

“May Ling’s artwork shows the impact of the cultural aesthetic with which she grew up, as well as the effect of her strong family ties. From her father, an engineer, she inherited an interest in logic and mathematics, which is reflected in her repeated use of numbers, ledger paper and mechanical imagery. After a brief career as a secretary, her mother became a homemaker, and inspired Martinez’s fascination with household objects and the concept of “home” as a symbol for domestic happiness,” said Tina Yapelli, director of SDSU’s University Art Gallery.

The L Street Fine Art Gallery is located at 628