SAO PAULO.- The rain falls in fine streaks: silvery dashes that strike the hot surface of the ceramic roof tiles, lined up in waves all the way to the eaves. Large drops hang from them and trickle down one after another in teardrop shapes, making a popping sound as they hit whatever they touch. Tr-t-t. Plic…plic. You can almost hear the sound of the patter and the dripping, which carries the message that the year begins wet.
Nearby, on another canvas, pointed leaves overlap in several layers, some illuminated by a flash of light, others sinking into shadow. The palette is entirely golden-olive: ochres, moss greens, browns, and gold, all within the same tonal family, with very low contrast, bathed in a warm, filtered light, like the light that filters through a garden after the rain. It takes a moment to spot the snail – it’s in the center of the canvas, its slimy body stretched out like a leaf, its rounded shell almost blending in with the pattern and color of the leaves surrounding it. Paula lets it sink into the foliage, so that the eye must search for it and recreate the snail’s slow pace. In the lower corner, two tiny white dots, two minuscule four-petaled flowers, are the only clear and distinct feature, almost like a breath of fresh air. If you look closely, the canvas’s weave shows through the paint and creates a grainy, tactile texture with a damp surface. Here, the eye often becomes the snail itself, slowly traversing the world up close.
– words by Pollyana Quintella
Working from notebooks, drawings, and memories, Paula Siebra develops her canvases through a measured accumulation of domestic, material, and vernacular images. In the studio, she often departs from toned grounds, usually terracotta, ochre or grayish neutrals, building thin layers that soften contours, reduce contrast, and temper hues so that light floats between object and field. Motifs, simultaneously specific and open multiply: a river, a hill, a clay jar, lace, wooden ex-votos, faades bleached by sun and sea, gloves, a packed suitcase, a dinner service. Across scenes belonging to everyday life, memory, and dreams, atmosphere carries as much weight as form.
Siebra’s visual vocabulary first unfolded in Cear, northeastern Brazil, where the artist was born and still lives, absorbing artifacts of daily life, silicogravura sand art, elements from nature, and the planar geometry of modest architecture. She engages with the canvas through patient looking and lived familiarity while expressing her subject matter beyond regionalism. A subtle semantic force animates her compositions, where meaning arises not through declaration but through the quiet pressure of forms held in relation. Siebra’s paintings reflect affinities with artists such as Frida Kahlo and Balthus in their handling of enclosed space and psychological layeredness and with Domenico Gnoli, Vicente do Rego Monteiro, and Antonio Donghi in their attention to form and figuration.
Her artistic practice offers a “cartography of returns” – a method of establishing presence within the irregular accumulation of time and habit. The ineffable stillness found in a body of water is equally present in table scenes, portraits, and dioramic interiors. Many of these landscapes and rooms remain eerily unpeopled. When a figure does appear, it is seen from a slight remove, adding a soft voyeurism that intensifies the sense of private time held in suspension, whether in the form of solitary reflection or small groups engaged in celebration.
Paula Siebra (b. 1998, Fortaleza, Brazil) lives and works in Fortaleza.
