The current prints and paintings in an ongoing exhibit at South Shore Arts was created from an intense reaction the artist felt following the turmoil of 9/11 and the start of the Iraq War.

"Power in the Line: The Expressionist Art of Diane Thodos," is on display through April 26 in the Atrium Gallery at Munster's Center for Visual and Performing Arts.

The show features pieces from Thodos' "War and Storm" series, a post-9/11 evolution from her figure, movement and gesture art during the '80s.

"After 9/11, things really began to change in my work," Thodos said. "Somewhere in me a very intense expressionist side erupted. It sent a shockwave through my system and immediately into my work."

One piece in the exhibit, "The Destroyer," is specific to the destruction of the World Trade Center.

"It's a giant hand that's pulling down these two abstracted towers," Thodos said.

Other works include "Weeping Skull," a response not only to the Iraq War but also a statement about war in general.

"One thing about being an expressionist -- you don't digest things intellectually. It simply touches off certain inner forces that are released," Thodos said. "I'm sure I had all this turbulence in me before, but it just ups the ante a huge amount when you feel it in the world around you."

Born in Evanston, Ill. (where she currently lives), Thodos attended Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh (1981 to 1985) and the School of Visual Arts in New York (1987 to 1989). In 1984 Thodos studied at Studio 17 in Paris with Jackson Pollock's abstract expressionist teacher, printmaker Stanley William Hayter.

"It had a huge impact on my work," Thodos said. "I understand things I never could have before."

Thodos was a Pollock-Krasner Grant recipient in 2002, and she has also studied with New York art critic Donald Kuspit.