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InspirationArt & Culture

Rich and colourful artworks that paint a fascinating picture of American suburbia

In her ongoing body of work, American artist Celia Reisman loves to create paintings from memory of various residential neighbourhoods in Philadelphia and other locations around the United States.

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A sunlit residential street with a blue flowering tree, cypress, white house with blue gate, and palm trees under a hazy sky in warm yellows and blues

Like the opening scene to a movie, Celia invites us to gaze upon a world of perfect wooden houses, little driveways and blossoming front gardens with immaculate lawns – showing the pride that people take in their own homes.

Working with an abstracted construction of architecture and nature, she combines these elements within a rich, complex world of invented colour and shapes. Her process is to make drawings in her car from direct observation. Relying on the information in the drawings and from memory, large scale paintings are developed in her studio that invent colour, light and space but still honour the initial site that inspired the painting.

Celia is represented by the Paul Thiebaud Gallery. Her work was selected for the American Academy of Arts and Letters Invitational Exhibition where she received a Hassam, Speicher, Betts, and Symons Purchase Award. She long served as Assistant Professor of Art at Swarthmore College, and is currently a Visiting Critic at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art in Philadelphia.

Via This Isn't Happiness | All images courtesy of Celia Reisman

Sunlit suburban landscape with palm trees, cypress trees, flowering bougainvillea, yellow and white modernist houses set against rolling golden hills
A sunny suburban street with colourful houses, bare and leafy trees, yellow flowers in the foreground, and a green lawn, painted in bright abstracted colours
Suburban street lined with blossoming trees and white picket fences, leading to residential houses with yellow-lit windows in soft, warm tones
Bright painting of a suburban neighbourhood with a white house, wooden gate, palm trees, rolling golden hills, blue umbrella and orange planter in the foreground
Suburban street scene with cream and terracotta houses, bare trees, green plants and a yellow umbrella under a deep blue sky, painted in warm and cool tones
Suburban houses with glowing windows at dusk, bare trees silhouetted against a blue sky dotted with stars, rendered in muted pastels and geometric forms
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