Paula Rubino - Quiet
“Strangeness is the indispensable condiment of all beauty” - - Charles Baudelaire
Paula Rubino was born in 1968 in New Jersey. Turning away from her earned law degree at age 24, she moved to Florence, Italy to focus instead on her passions for writing and painting. She studied drawing and painting at Italy’s highly acclaimed Florence Academy of Art. She then studied etching with renowned artist, Richard Serrin and traveled several times to Norway to study with Odd Nerdrum. She currently lives and works in Finland. Her paintings are marked by their simple, almost stark compositions which allow these traditional academic works to reach a contemporary audience.
After Gabriel's
Announcement •
Oil on canvas
40" x 43.5"
Portrays the moment after the Annunciation, when Mary is left alone with the news she just received from the angel Gabriel. Mary is turned away from the viewer's intrusion, and she is both protected and closed in by a garden wall. This painting reflects the overwhelming feelings I had when I was expecting my son: the daunting and unique responsibility of being his mother, the immediate ferocious desire to keep him safe, and most of all, the realization that my life was irreversibly changed. The red slippers are an allusion to Dorothy's desire to be home and safe.
Annunciation
Oil on canvas
12.25" x 28"
Bosco
•
Oil on Canvas
6" x 6"
Cumulus
•
Oil on canvas
9.5" x 13.5"
Eastward Shift
•
Oil on canvas
29" x 23"
Eleventh Hour
Oil on canvas
27.5" x 22"
A romantic depiction of the frailty of individual freedoms. Miss Civil Liberty poses like a 1950´s film star by the edge of a pool in her lush garden. However, the garden walls are high and ominous as we catch perhaps a last fleeting glimpse of her.
Finland
•
Oil on Canvas
8" x 14"
Giura Che Mai...
•
Oil on canvas
29" x 22"
"Swear that never… will you renounce your hunger."
Golden Delicious
Oil on canvas
9" x 8"
Migratory Birds
Stop at The St. Louis
Oil on canvas
40" x 43.5"
I am now living in Finland, cold and distant, and in the winters we escape for awhile. But not before we spend the summer watching the local Eurasian cranes dancing, learning to fly, and eventually migrating to Africa. This painting depicts my husband and myself as two migratory birds, wintering in New York City at a pension formerly called The St. Louis which had been built in the 1920´s for itinerant workers.
Nostalgia
Oil on canvas
43.5" x 49"
Idea built on a news program interviewing Russians who harbour intense nostalgia for Stalin, and the ironic commercial development that high end perfumeries are making products with packaging and smells that remind people of those sparse days. This is only one tiny example of the nostalgia that everyone feels. Two women sit on the floor and reminisce, but the room(sentiment) is stripped of reality and context.
One Chinese
Pearapple
Oil on canvas
6.5" x 6.5"
Pears
•
Oil on canvas
6" x 10"
Plums and Chinese
Slippers •
Oil on canvas
9.5" x 11.5"
Quiet I
•
Oil on canvas
21" x 18.5"
This series celebrates how rapidly nature changes and expresses the hope that times will improve.
Quiet II
•
Oil on canvas
17.5" x 23.5"
Quiet III
Oil on canvas
16" x 25.5"
Quiet IV
•
Oil on canvas
18.5" x 19"
Sea Curve
•
Oil on canvas
8" x 14"
The Rediscovery
of Nancy Drew •
Oil on canvas
10" x 14"
Two Chinese
Pearapples •
Oil on canvas
9.5" x 12.5"
Vestibule
Oil on canvas
39.5" x 23.5"
Self portrait during a transition in which I found myself in a strange state of mind, a place that felt small and dark and full of change and mystery, like a vestibule or cloakroom.