Pulse

Artist Statement

Chiaroscuro Gallery Santa Fe, September, 2005

How, in this age, can a painting still move us? How can it engage us, invite an exchange, penetrate our space, prime our senses and affect an understanding of our world and ourselves?    I believe that a painting can project beyond itself by creating a pictorial environment in which the viewer and the work are joined in a specific moment of awareness. Through the language of painting and the use of imaginative processes, my works speak of sensation, feeling and the way we see. The works are informed by my interest in physics, abstraction, ecology, and ideas concerning beauty, among other sources.

My Pieces are at once lively and meditative—a catalyst for the senses and a window to one’s interior world. Their sensuous, interactive surfaces sometimes refract light and shift in color or depth as the light changes or as the viewer walks by. Because they suggest a complexity and order found only in nature, the viewer questions what is real and what is not. The abstraction helps to break our preconceptions and stir feeling and memory. New ideas are formed as we examine what we see through how we see. In a hurried world, these pieces make us stop and pay attention.

I believe that materials and processes transport ideas. To achieve my goals, I craft the paint myself using powdered mica pigment and PVA (archival white glue). In these new paintings, I use atypical tools to obscure the presence of the hand and to allow the process to inform the image. After extensive preparation, each piece is completed in one session and cannot be reworked. The cinematic movement of color, light, and form suggests ebb and flow between nature and artifice, spirit and matter, and the reductive and the maximal. The paintings evoke sensibilities reminiscent of baroque play of light and Asian art. An underlying rhythm runs through the work, like a heart beat, assuring us that painting lives.

Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art

ONE OF A KIND:
Encaustic Monotype by Paula Roland
Biloxi, Mississippi July 23-September 11, 2004
ARTIST’S STATEMENT

Making art provides a dialogue between my inner and outer worlds. It connects me to others and provides revelations that deepen my self-understanding. As the Buddhist saying goes, what’s important is the journey, not the destination. Being an artist is an endlessly satisfying and challenging journey.

In my works, the processes and materials that I use become metaphors for my ideas. Because of the fluid nature of the wax, I am forced to react and invent on the spot, much like other intuitive art forms like jazz or improvisational dance. This way of working allows avenues of discovery that can’t be accessed through the cognitive mind. The fluidity of the wax requires a letting go, while remaining mindful. I find the approach a stimulating process, and a meditation.

While my works are abstract, most people see in them a connection to nature. I grew up on the Gulf Coast, with the beach and Gulf in my front yard, and a woodsy tangled area in my backyard. The freedom to roam and play that was important then carries over in my works. We first know the world through our senses. By using opaque and translucent surfaces, iridescent color, lush texture, and aromatic beeswax, I lead the viewer to a sensory experience that stirs feeling and memory and perhaps leads to new ideas or insight.

Fractal Field, is an installation of up to 30 individual encaustic monotypes that can be arranged in various ways. To make these prints, I use tools to move molten, encaustic over a heated plate in dance-like  movements. These gestures arrest in a Zen moment, an instant that is not preconceived. Asian paper is laid over the plate and the pigmented wax image is absorbed. Much of my work involves a pattern interrupted by chance. Pattern creates order out of chaos, but at some point the interrupted pattern begins to mimic nature. This is a phenomena that if find intriguing. Fractals, a term from physics, are self-same patterns that repeat on different scales in nature, such as the branching networks of trees, rivers, and the veins in our bodies. Because my hand and body movements relate in a way that is particular to me, these pieces are “fractal” in their similarity. As in nature, a hidden order is revealed, making the unknown visible.

I find pattern and rhythm everywhere. In nature it is in the cycles of seasons, day and night, birth, death and rebirth. In our own bodies, our heart’s beat and blinking eyes are patterned rhythms. The series Chant relates the patterned qualities of my work with the ancient healing properties of chants, which have existed throughout centuries and across cultures. Included in this tradition are Catholicism’s Gregorian Chants, Buddhist chants, and the chants of the Kabala, the Jewish mystical tradition. Less well known are the chants of the Shipibo Canibo peoples of Peru. There, the shaman’s repetitive incantations produce a healing transformation in those seeking a cure. The cure is complete only when the people of the village interpret these sound patterns in visual designs woven into cloth and applied to pottery. Similarly, I see my wax and pigment flower prints and drawings as prayers made visible—spiritual expressions for peace and the healing.

Synesthesia
 
AN EXHIBITION IN THREE PARTS
Chiaroscuro Gallery
June 20, 2003
While my works are abstract, most people see in them a connection to the nature. Morris Berman speaks of the world before the scientific revolution as a place of belonging, where the individual was a participant, not merely an observer. I long for this world. Today, culture and nature collide in a faux universe of virtual reality and vanishing authenticity. These works remind us to question our expectations, to observe the interplay amongst reality, science, spirit and art.

New Mexico, with its proximity to big science, art, and spirituality, is a nexus for the exploration of the unknown. Living there has heightened my interest in chaos and complexity theories, nuclear science, and genetics. This culture of science resides alongside Native American spirituality, Hispanic Catholicism, Buddhism, and New Age belief, among others. Matter and spirit seem to merge in quantum physics. All of these realms set the conditions for a poeticized science, the primary arena for my exploration in art.

Synesthesia refers to a crossing, or mingling of the senses. For example, color may be linked with words or taste, or a sensation may be felt in one part of the body as a different part is stimulated. This apt title, borrowed from science, was chosen for its poetic metaphoric qualities and to unify three bodies of work.

In Synesthesia, process and materials are metaphors for my ideas. I cultivate chance occurrence by utilizing the effects of movement, gravity, chemical action, or heat. In the Strange Attractor Series, liquefied powdered pigments and mica powders change radically and unpredictably as they dry. These acrylic pieces cannot be reworked. I use “guided” chance, setting up situations, which force me to react and invent on the spot, leading to discovery. In Fractal Field, a series of encaustic monotypes, pigmented wax is heated and transferred to one-of-a kind pieces on paper—another alchemical process. My gestural body movements become natural fractals. These are unique from the paisley-like fractal images that are computer-generated from mathematical equations. Chant, my most recent series, relates patterned qualities of my work with the ancient healing properties of chants, which have existed throughout centuries and across cultures. I see these wax/pigment/graphite drawings and flower prints as prayers made visible—spiritual expressions for peace and the healing of the earth.