Provenance: Acquired directly from the arist by the present owner

ABOUT THE WORK

Pacita Abad seems to channel the sensibility of children and primitive art at the same time her work mocks the seriousness of high art and introduces the element of play. Indeed, at first glance it looks like a child’s exuberant drawing of a festive house. The playful and childlike effect also creates a decorative effect. Whereas childlike painting is akin to curbing that natural exuberant expressiveness in painting to “be neat’ and to “keep the color inside the lines”, the art of Pacita Abad are object lessons on how to paint exactly as the artist pleases on the principle that there are no rules and theories in picture making but may have a natural response to psychological values of colors, lines and shapes. It is easy to describe childlike painting as artistic endeavor, which, of course, it essentially is not, and to credit many a lucky accident as an expressive intention. But at the same expression must often be released through forms and colors that are not accurate transcriptions of nature and that art audiences have learned to understand childlike painting as well as naive expressionism on this basis. Pacita Abad’s constant probes into the possibilities of merging figurative and nonfigurative elements, oriental and Occidental motifs, collage and painting techniques, organic and geometric forms have given much of her work as a painter a look at once studied and tentative.