Sheila Grabarsky

As a small child - third grade, to be exact - Grabarsky painted a watercolor sun into a sky and created a color! She was amazed at how simply she could create a new color that wasn't there before. Grabarsky remains awe-struck, still, at color creation.

Grabarsky's work is about introspection - spiritual, psychological, soul-searching. If only to look inside, look at her work. It would be good for the viewer to be still and accept his or her personal freedom of interpretation.

Grabarsky's process is one of "reduction;" painting til the canvas is full of movement and connections, she sees the world, then obliterating that world-chaos until the work becomes a complete and orderly compostion.

There is not pretense in her work. Channeling the "process" rather than focusing on "product" wrenches the visceral truth(s). Finishing touches and fine tuning soften the blow. For Grabarsky, there is much listening to authentic intuitiveness with abstraction (and, it always requires music). Lately, Grabarsky has been exploring a new technique of "drawing" with dried acrylic "skins" (residues) that are adhered to the canvas just because they are so beautiful she cannot bear to destroy them.

As in all art, Grabarsky's work reflects her personal domain, reflection and history. The titles of her series are diaristic - they are, for her, a personal look back at the time in which they were painted. The lightness and comfort are new to her works - previous works were usually forebodingly dark portraits based on German Expressionism. What remains pure in all her works is coloration and intensity.

Grabarsky sees abstraction everywhere - in nature, in architecture, in my mind's eye. Look at a window - study each individual pane and you just might see an infinite number of exciting compositions of line, color, dimension, perspective and form, as she do.