Artist News: Celia Reisman

The Strangely Familiar Art of Celia Reisman

By Tiding of Magpies

The suburban American childhood. We would run around the neighborhood like wild things, making forts in the dusty bug-smelling places behind garages, between buildings, in parking lots, and alleyways. Looking into people’s houses at dusk in that space in the evening when the lights go on but the curtains aren’t closed, daring each other to run farther as the dark closed deeper. In dreams of a childhood house and the neighborhood where we grew up, the light is always heavy, swollen, glowing and shifting. It feels as though Celia Reisman had found a way to paint these dreams, with the strange light and askew view that memory brings to all things. And the dream of a world in these paintings is defined by colors and observed, if not inhabited, by flowers. Realer than reality, and beautifully odd, but impossible, too. She captures that feeling of certain times of the day or year when you feel like a stranger in your own neighborhood. When you suddenly notice the oddly connecting squirrel-highway of backyard fences, the strange light in one window, the strange shadow in another, the haunting space within a doorway, when you drift through your own world in a strange dream. And these paintings capture the deep and longstanding American fascination with the strangeness of familiar places. Beyond the pastel perfection or neatly trimmed grass is the endearingly oddly beautiful secret living of human lives. Connected and private, familiar and oh so strange.

“The other day I put a painting aside that I have been struggling with for several months. A Piero della Francesca book was on the floor and I realized that if I work with the color relationships of this Piero painting then I would solve my problems. It was accidental, the book lying next to my painting, but I made the connection between the two and it provides a guide to the way I can invent. Sometimes this means being present in the studio; not having a direct answer, but paying attention and being open to ideas and something clicks. Invention comes at random times, in unexpected ways.

Lucian Freud said that one can never know what will happen in a painting. Every mark is a surprise. I work from drawings but as much as I may plan the painting it always presents unexpected surprises. Sometimes they are clearly exciting and sometimes they create more problems for me. I get excited about drawing from a location and then I can’t wait to start the painting. Starting is always a thrill, it’s trying to figure out when the painting is finished that becomes another mystery.

My interest in the domestic landscape stems from my personal background of living in middle-class suburbia for most of my life. My paintings combine architecture with nature but are the opposite of “plain” using lots of color, twists and turns, complex compositions with much to see.

Growing up with deaf parents, I was asked to “look” as a way to learn and experience the world. I continue to find inspiration from looking. It is basic, rich with opportunities for exploration and interpretation. I came to representation backwards: abstraction first, from my student days and then direct observation.

Neighborhoods provide open-ended territory; moments when I can be specific and yet have the freedom to transcend a particular place and time. My aim is not to replicate the visual experience, but to communicate the feeling of visual excitement when I first see something of interest. 

I want my paintings to be worlds unto themselves, where you feel you are experiencing something for the first time even though it is familiar.” – Celia Reisman