Mixed-media artist Paula Wilson enlists an extensive range of techniques to create her hybrid works. Using sculpture, collage, painting, installation, and printmaking methods such as silkscreen, lithography, and woodblock, Wilson explores perceptions of light, form, and the body in space. Various textures and vibrant colors are layered in collaged pieces, such as Tomorrow’s Tomorrow (2008), where a vase of flowers lit by a stained glass window is constructed on a piece of paper through oil, spray paint, and collaged, inlayed woodblock prints. Equally multifaceted as her densely layered collages is her subject matter and vast expanse of inspirations, drawn from cultural histories, identities, and an exploration of various female personas.
“My work is anchored in self-portraiture, printmaking, and collage. It is monumental and tactile, describing narratives and environments that fit my experience as a biracial Black woman. I reimagine art historical tropes, inserting versions of myself into the landscape and canon. Using collage, I build narratives by collapsing pictorial planes, shifting between graphic and painterly representations. I print images with wood blocks, silkscreens, intaglio, and monotypes; I layer acrylic, oil, and spray paint; I shoot videos inserting 2-D work into the landscape; I cut, glue, and stitch to make colorful, dense assemblages.”
Paula Wilson (born 1975) is an African-American “mixed media” artist creating works examining women’s identities through a lens of cultural history. She uses sculpture, collage, painting, installation, and printmaking methods such as silkscreen, lithography, and woodblock. Paula Wilson attended Washington University (St. Louis, MO) from 1994-1998, earning her BFA and graduating summa cum laude. Wilson earned her MFA from Columbia University (New York, NY) in 2005. Wilson currently lives and works in Carrizozo, New Mexico with her partner, woodworker Mike Lagg.
