Revirescence, at Art Informal November 2024
While painting this series, I was thinking a lot about life cycles. A trees drops their leaves and then grows leaves anew, the petals of an echinacea flower wither away while its central cone seed and becomes flowers for the next season, the remnants of clay from the ceramic studio is made into clay again. Here in the tropics, days seem like equinoxes, a different repetitive cycle for me. How do we move through the seasons, the months, the days with presence, living each day with grace and with dignity? How do we honour nature and the people we care for?
Grove Series: Gabriel and Mary
2024
61 x 94.25 in / 154.94 x 239.40 cm
laser-carved cardboard
“There is a wonderful interplay or conversation going on between the watercolours, the laser-cut cardboard and the ceramics. Technically they are very assured. The titles are like poetic titles from the 1890s: Grove Series: Gabriel and Mary; The sight of the Moon over a windless Meadow; The Path the Sun makes in the ebb of day.”
TONY GODFREY, TUESDAY IN THE TROPICS 197
My recent laser-carved cardboard paintings are taken from art history and landscapes that I’m familiar with. Inspired by Symbolism and Romanticism in art, especially the late works of Hidalgo, I was seeking to create an emotional response to the pastoral landscapes I was painting. The cardboard paintings came out of drawing en plein-air at an artist’s residency last summer, located in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. I continued these sketches, developing the drawings into watercolour paintings, and then translating that into computer files. Through a series of laser light pulses, I carve the image onto cardboard, a material that alludes to the ubiquitous symbol of the Philippine diaspora, the Balikbayan box.
“The work of Jill Paz is a spiritual journey through art -- a multi-dimensional visual narrative that transports you to a different time and space. It is earthy, natural and symbolical, and can be reimagined into a thousand different interpretations. Her art seemingly feels like one is mapping out Morse code in an eco/Mother Earth kind of way
— Luis Espiritu, ‘The Cycle of Life’ Social Set, Daily Tribune