Louise Waber: The World Inside This One

“There is another world and it is inside this one”
– Paul Eluard

I work in an intuitive manner without a preconceived idea, not knowing how it will turn out. I am a slow and patient painter, looking at the work, responding to what is there, and then allowing the painting to define itself. I am looking to be surprised. Often there are ghostly lines and marks in my paintings, lines from earlier times in the painting’s history.  Whether on paper or canvas, the painting is an accumulation of events. 

The series of works in this show began in March 2020 when the city went into quarantine and my kitchen table became my studio. My brother died the first month of the shutdown, and my sorrow, fear and confusion of that time filtered through the work; yet there was also an enormous sense of purposefulness and even joy sometimes in waking up every day and going to that studio. My experience of being in the world is in this work.

Over more recent years inspiration comes through my sixth-floor view of the Hudson River and the immense sky above it. The variety of lines and its relationship to space; the zigzagging lines, the curlicues, the broken lines, the soaring parallels, and the dashes and slashes, commas, semi-colons, parentheses. And the light. Oh the light. Different spectacle and poetry every day and night. All my information is there.