Paul Seftel
Artist Biography
The elements and materials I use involve some
chemistry. My work emphatically speaks of surface quality. I create my own
paint, plaster and patina mixtures and textures. It is the sense and feeling
of spirituality and alchemy that truly absorbs me, and fuels my creative discoveries.
I find myself looking into the surfaces of life, the shapes and structures
of our world. I am influenced by transformation and cycles of Nature, as they
reflect both microscopic and macrocosmic worlds. Essentially my process has
a very organic nature, and I practice expressive and meditative techniques
in creating my work.
I’m passionate about creating atmospheres- the idea of infusing the
air with a feeling, both provocative and transcendent.
I’ve been working with a large collection of found stamps for the last
year, and I’m enjoying the ‘time capsule’ aspect of these
works as I bring to life memories and messages hidden in our past. Cancelled
or ‘franked’, old stamps are like Spent messages. The random abstraction
of the franking mark surprises me, in its’ one of a kind nature impressed
upon the face. It may conjure a specific place and time from any moment past.
Imbued with history and experience it transports our lucid perception, sent
not only in space, but as historical ephemera, in time. There is a language
spoken with the art of a stamp that is universal. Creating an intentional
warp in the weave of time, the point of this project, which incorporates both
print and paint in the series, is toperhaps slip through into another era
of thought for a moment and to find meaning from the past in the present.
To take something so small, and make visible the hidden details is an act
of transparency. The purpose is to see what is overlooked, and see in a new
way, an art form that has been, for the most part transposed by other forms
of contemporary communication.
A bit of personal history:
On a voyage of discovery, there is often a catalyst which provokes a change.
My personal approach to art and life was inspired by a traumatic accident
I had when visiting Java, Indonesia when I was 21. I fell into a deep ravine
in the middle of the night as I was hiking to see sunrise on top of a Volcano.
I fell about 80ft and had an ‘out of body experience’- a state
of death=bliss experience. When I came to, finding that the ground had opened
up and I’d been swallowed by the earth, not only was I thrust into an
otherworldly state of visions and dreams, but also my right hand was totally
messed up (badly dislocated). So my story, and the healing journey began by
exchanging the subtleties of using a paintbrush, which I had been learning
and doing since I was a child, in favor of rock hounding, stone carving and
studying alternative healing techniques. If there is a how and why natural
elements are so important to my work, this is where it all started. Since
experiencing that sensation of being swallowed by the earth, I’ve been
working to bring through the sense I feel of texture and tone from the inside
out. The strata and layers of life as they exist in the world, and the minerals
and traces that are the transformational make up of life and spirit.
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