Rebecca Sobin Contemporary Art
Merging the Internal Landscape with
the External World
Artist Statement
To say that color is key in how I engage in the world is an understatement. Color influences every aspect of my life and in the natural world it is the driving force of many choices made by birds, insects, and other animals. We are after all animals too, tool-using animals, but still in the scientific classification of Animalia. Instinctively, I am drawn to colors that resonate with how I feel at the moment, or how I want to feel at a particular time, or how a particular color makes me feel.
Working in oil and cold wax and alternately handmade mineral paints, I create vivid, topographical, sculptural, and multilayered paintings. As an abstract artist, I translate my perceived reality into color and shape, creating a “topography of place” in my work. Cross- pollinating ideas and visions from both the internal and external aspects of my environment and translating what I see and feel into my work is how I embody my creative process. It is just that – a process - one of discovery, learning, and being. In that sense, I invite people to join in the discovery, to see and feel the connectivity from the self - the inner landscape, to the earth, terra firma - the outer landscape through the visual conduit of color, shape, and gesture that all inform the texture, light and movement of a piece.
I consider my work a journey. Having lived in different regions throughout time, the topography, people, flora, fauna and cultural aspects of place have added direction, depth and nuance into the stories they each hold, the stories that the viewer can integrate into their own internal landscape.