By Andrew Firestone

Images and ideas have funny relationships.

How best to describe what the animation of Somerville artist Karen Aqua? Surrealism? Perhaps a little. Postmodern mythology? A little simplified. Magic? Certainly.

Graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design, Aqua has made a living in animated shorts for over 30 years, most of them spent in her Miller Street studio on the Somerville-Cambridge line. Her methods, often combining attributes of transformation, surrealism, and vivid color composition leave the audience mystified. “I like [the color] Aqua, because it is my name,” said Aqua. “Over the years my colors got more saturated.”

Aqua’s films do not involve narrative in the traditional sense, and often revolve around primal themes of life and transformation. “Sometimes they are very nebulous ideas,” said Aqua, “and sometimes they are very direct.”

In her newest film, “Twist of Fate”, Aqua documents her experience battling cancer, and brings her style to the next level. Truly an epic subconscious image-ballad to the darkest moments of life, the short exemplifies Aqua’s theory of art in her work: “animation is a universal language.” The film took five years to make, from concept to execution.

The film, lauded around the world, imagines the effects of cancer through the view of the cells in the body. Called a masterpiece by critics, It won the Director’s Choice Award at the Black Maria Film and Video Festival.

Aqua’s oeurve extends beyond festivals, she has even worked for shorts on Seseme Street, and had the chance to work with Elmo.