Bio

An Australian visual artist currently based in Brisbane, Paula has lived most of her life in Townsville, Cairns and tropical North Queensland. Paula spends hours photographing urban scenes throughout Brisbane with a focus on how light interacts with the streetscapes in the late afternoon and early mornings.

Paula's digital art is photographed and edited by her and the images are designed to be viewed from a distance. When seen up close, the image is semi abstract and isn't designed to be detailed like a photograph, but to be small shapes of color or texture. All her life Paula has had a desire to create and this drives her to produce and reinvent objects from a new perspective. As an artist, Paula is constantly observing patterns, textures, curves, perspectives, shapes, visual passing of time, and the gradients of light and reflections found everywhere. Photographing these elements as they appear can be obsessive as they are everywhere from footpath drains to roof tops, from flowers to bridges. It's Paula's ability to use her emotions to identify vintage features and intensify the color and contrast to amplify the elements which inspires her and she anticipates is the same for the viewer.

Paula has a long held love of printmaking, developed while at Art College in the 1980's and has used this passion to develop and purposely apply to her artwork using 21st century techniques to allow for mass production, while still being able to create varying artworks. The photographic screen print technique also appeals to the artist as does using dot and line screens and the use of tonal dropouts. While at Art College, Paula experimented with, black and white printing and continues to use solarization techniques. The tones of her digital artwork is manipulated by adding dot, line or solarization effects and applied to the printing of objects and stencils used when creating the artwork.

The artist has been influenced by the colours of tropical North Queensland including Charters Towers gold fields, the farming community of the Burdekin and the islands. She regularly visited the Outback, Daintree rainforest, the Barrier Reef, the Whitsundays islands and has camped on deserted Brook Island near Cardwell.

Paula was more interested in natural science studying insects and watching wildlife documentaries. Her artistic ability didn't show, till high school art class'. As a child after the rains, she would catch guppies, turtles and crabs in the swamp and build shapes with the clay on side of the road and dig for quartz under a tree on the neighbour footpath and make cubby houses in the tall grass' across from their house.

Paula's love of photography began as a child when her family would have slide nights featuring her father's photographic slides of Paula's siblings. A memorable slide, taken from a distance portrays a sibling in a fairy costume who appears to be magically in the hand of another in the foreground. The timing of action shots of siblings jumping off a log into the water and suspended in mid-air left a lasting impression and encouraged Paula to include similar features or reflections in her subject matter. Paula is always looking to add an extra interest, never just settling for the obvious. All photography is taken on location by the artist using different techniques, filters, angles and environmental conditions The artist also paints her photographs and maps in oil paints and continues to experiment and develop her techniques in this media.