Paula Keyth

Paula Keyth grew up in New York City. She has also lived and studied art in England, San Francisco, Rome, and Portland, Oregon. She attended the San Francisco Academy of Art, the San Francisco Art Institute, and the Pacific Northwest College of Art, where she graduated with a BFA. She currently works as a Peer Support Specialist in the community of Sandy, Oregon. Pulling from her multifold experiences, she attempts to reconcile the dark pieces of the past. She aims to heal through art making and is inspired by dreams, music, and literature.

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"My paintings are a combination of my personal memories and perceptions, blended with history and mythos from around the world. I collect and collate pieces from different times and places - both drawn from the imagination and collaged from magazines. Using  the scraps of the past and present, I combine the personal and universal in a dreamlike setting.

My work is alchemical in nature: in the paintings, feline, human and piscine forms turn hybrid; shapes shift, co-mingle, or appear from the ether; figures become abstract and vice versa. Beneath the surface, ghostly images reveal themselves, emerging from an earthly prison.

I am inspired by the Renaissance artists such as Tintoretto, Titian, and Tiepolo, as well the Surrealists, including Max Ernst, Leonora Carrington, and Remedios Varo - with a major nod to Bosch, El Greco, and Goya. The figures in my paintings often struggle with the darker aspects of the human condition, suffering cruelties of earthly existence while striving to connect with the spirits of nature.

In this latest series, I combine various mediums including acrylic paint, watercolors, collage, and paint pens, to create my cast of creatures - hybrids, giants, gods, and spirits. These beings converge to create liminal spaces between worlds, where themes of death, decay, and rebirth are prominent, and new worlds emerge."

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