Interior Dialogues Colored Pencil Paintings by Marilyn Rabetz

Marilyn Rabetz works in the genre of still-life, but uses this as a foundation upon which to create dense personal combinations of images bent as much on being abstract, formal, color works as they are dreamlike stories. The underlying framework of the formal structure of mass, rhythm, direction and color is as crucial to understanding the works as is the technical precision of the sharp-focus realist tradition she began to explore when studying with Philip Pearlstein. She frequently includes references to works by other artists, which allows her to bring the human countenance in to add to the interior life of her images.

Rabetz works in colored pencil, and though technically her pieces are drawings, she refers to them as paintings because of the effect she achieves of continuous and smooth color. The medium allows extraordinary luminosity as the colors are applied over each other in multiple layers, and each layer shines through the ones above.

Dodd Research Center
Curator: Dennis Thornton