California Dreamin' Print

Hi! I am Paula Gibbs, an abstract artist living in Tucson, AZ. It took a near-death experience in 2012 to turn me into an artist. It was my first day home after winning a battle with advanced stage pneumonia, one which most people lose. That day I had what I suppose was an epiphany. Suddenly art had to be in my life. It is quite odd because not for one second had I ever considered being an artist. Why would I? Art was something for people with creative talent and the skill to bring ideas into the physical world. That certainly did not describe me. Having no art education, my recovery was spent researching, and later I experimented with many mediums. For the last few years I settled on working with metal, aluminum actually. I created my own unique style of lightly distressing sheet metal, painting it and mounting to wood panels. What I refer to as my metal art is distressed (sometimes not) and painted aluminum mounted on wood panels. The style is truly unique. I am fairly certain you won’t find anything like it. Even my simpler pieces involve a long (to me anyway) process of creating a design, measuring, cutting, sanding, and usually distressing the metal. Then, I paint it, usually with enamel, and more sanding. I sand by hand because that is the only way to achieve the look I want. In an effort to work on a medium that is “softer” (and without edges sharp as razor blades) and less physical, I have turned my attention to painting on canvas, and on wood panels as multi-piece large installations/wall sculptures. My canvas painting is still in exploration mode. My colorful wall sculptures, which I termed Wall of Color, are completely customizable in size, color, overall layout. For some reason each individual bright glossy panel reminds me of Chiclets.