I work between the boundaries of representation and abstraction.  Everywhere we look there is more than meets the eye - more than we can grasp.  My paintings are a series of moments when taken together become a composite of time.


Based on looking and memory, the environments in my paintings are constructed and modified into characters that capture more than one experience simultaneously.  The atmosphere, architecture, plant life and sometimes people, all project their essence of possibility. They contain the forgotten past, the unnoticed present and the promise of change.  By expanding upon the observational, the paintings are infused with a sense of discovery.


Inspired by the interaction of residential architecture with nature, I draw on site to make these observations stay put in paintings when they are ephemeral in life.  The narrow spaces in-between domestic residencies provide varied displays of shape and color that change from time of day and season to season.  In my studio I combine the drawing with changes of color, light and perspective altering the known with the imagined.  New forms develop that lead to that moment when there is a tension between the hard silhouette of a garage and the graceful lines of a tree.  My studio challenge is to orchestrate all the components so they hold that tension. By working between boundaries of representation and abstraction, meaning is created by my choices to balance all the elements. In return, the paintings transform my daily world into one suspended in mystery and surprise.


Celia Reisman lives and works in Merion, Pennsylvania and Strafford, Vermont.  She is

represented in Philadelphia by Gross McCleaf Gallery and Paul Thiebaud Gallery in San

Francisco.  She received a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University and an MFA from Yale 

University.   She has exhibited her work in solo exhibitions and group shows through out the

United States.  The American Academy of Arts and Letters Invitational Exhibition awarded

her a Purchase Prize and she was given a Survey Exhibition at the Michener Museum in

Doylestown, Pennsylvania.  She has been a Visiting Critic at programs in the US, Italy and 

Ireland and taught at numerous Art Departments in the Northeast.