I once had a teacher suggest to the class, “Don’t be an artist unless you can’t NOT be an artist."

 

I think I fall under that umbrella.  When my sister and I were growing up, one of our favorite things to do was gather up rocks and scrape them on the sidewalk to see what colors they would make.  We lived in Pennsylvania and the shale there made a whole palette from red-orange to sparkly gold to green and silvery blue.  After we made the colors we would just sit and stare at them in delight.

 

For me, color is a primary language that precedes words - it’s my language of feeling and beauty.  My interest as an artist has always been about light and color.  After graduate school I studied with a master colorist named Henry Hensche.  He was in his late eighties and he had spent his whole life devoted to color and his dedication was inspiring.

 

Later I took up pastels because of the immediacy and directness of the color.  More recently, I’ve gone back to my roots in oil painting.

 

My inspiration comes from Nature.  But, I am not focused on accurate representational images,  I am more engaged in expressing my perceptions of the world and making them visible to others.  I want to share a part of what it’s like to be me - using light and color to bridge the span that normally exists between us - so that you can see the world as I see it.

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Light and color bring me joy, and I want to share that through my paintings. I am honored and delighted when my work goes out in to the world -  I imagine my paintings as emissaries from a land of creativity and beauty, reminding others of their own creative spark.

 

Being an artist is a huge blessing that I am grateful for every day.

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Paula has a BS in Art and Math from Hamilton College in Clinton, NY, and an MFA from the Maryland Art Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland.