Artist Statement
My newest paintings for "Rooms" are about an embodied understanding of what I see and experience. These paintings include a wide variety of architectural spaces. They are about capturing a certain satisfaction in a moment of walking through a doorway and first seeing these self-contained spaces. It is fascinating to find places that effuse a flair of others personal tastes and histories. I am interested in creating paintings of what I observe in the world. Work that is more spiritual than it is intellectual or academic. My intent is to create images that provoke feelings that make the referential aspect more or less disappear.
What excites me the most about painting is the ability to create movement and illusionary depth within a rectangle as defined by the placement of color structures and paint application. For example, how space can be defined by color and shapes and how grouping objects can make them lose their individual identities, creating a more evocative, abstract and unforeseen composition. My endeavor is to convey an honest appraisal of what my eye saw, expressing it with an unpretentious naturalness. - Paula Swaydan Grebel