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Artists Registry
Oyster Bay Cove NY United States
Artist's Statement
New York/Americana series
New York and Americana series are intimately related in their conceptual process and representations: the
framing and the central plane reappear, now relating to the use American Indian icons, Quilt imagery and
New York Landmarks/ cliches used as patterns to elaborate her series of paintings.
The Americana series started in 1996. The title emerges in the ambiguity of its formulation, making a
feminine a word which, in the original is neutral, and thus subverting its origin. It explicitly refers to
America with an almost iconic value, as if, because being American, it also uses as a working basis a pattern of native American Indian origin and, later, the quilt, associated with native handicrafts frequently made by women. The artist incorporates in some of these paintings texts related to this subject.
The very quilt fragments being part of the canvas as readymades and than painted over, the motives
themselves tend to invade the painting that wraps, integrates and frames them. In fact the quilts correspond to Mandala structures, of varying complexity, since the late 18th century, decorative motives associated with local folklore.
With the New York series the artist inaugurated a new stage in her work, but integrating in it, as usual,
intimations of her past work. This group of paintings was done in 1999 and 2001 and is inspired by
landmarks/icons of N.Y., like the Empire State Building, Brooklyn Bridge, Central Park, United Nations,
and the Twin Towers. She interrupted this series when September 11 happened.
Resume
Isabel Pavão, artist, was born in Porto, Portugal. She studied Visual Arts at the School of Fine Arts in Porto. Having received a grant from the Portuguese Ministry of Culture for a research project involving her painting, she moved to Paris, France, in 1986. In 1988 she completed the "Diplôme d'Études Approfondies"--Master of Arts at the University of Saint Denis/Paris VIII and started her Ph.D. there in Arts and Aesthetics. In 1990 she moved to New York City, where she lives and works. In 1994, with the help of a grant from the Luso American and Gulbenkian Foundation, she earned the degree of Doctor of Arts at New York University, incorporating her own practice as an artist into her studies. Since 1984 she has exhibited her work in numerous galleries and museums in Portugal, France, Spain, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, the United States, Brazil, Ethiopia, China and India. Her artwork is owned by public and private collections in those countries. She often appears as an invited artist as well as a guest professor in universities, art schools and museums. She presents on contemporary art, aesthetics and art projects dealing with her own work. "Impressions Series" represents a recent phase of her paintings, but integrates in it, as usual, intimations of her past work, enduring patterns of inner experience, and conceptual and poetic processes; as a continuous work in progress, it is a reflection on the "act of painting" itself, inspired by marks of memory and nature.
www.isabelpavao.com