ALETA PIPPIN
Emotional Expressions
Aleta Pippin admits, “When I started to paint I tried to control everything.” Today, she experiments with the qualities of the various media she uses—acrylic, resin and oil. She has learned what each medium is capable of doing.
“I use a palette knife with the oils so I’m actually touching the paint,” she says. “Otherwise, I’m allowing the material to do what it does. Sometimes I add water to the acrylic or turpentine to the oil but the effect isn’t something I can control. The paintings are spontaneous and sometimes the effect I want is there but I can’t stop it. I walk a thin line between spontaneity and control.
“I’m all about color,” she continues. “Acrylics have a sharp synthetic quality and with oils I can use thin or thicker glazes and play with the rich colors oils have.”
Her latest mixed-media paintings will be in an exhibition, Here We Go Round in Circles, at Pippin Contemporary in Santa Fe, New Mexico, July 4 through 17, with an artist’s reception July 6.
Among the new work are “rounds,” circular paintings that evolved from her use of a spinner to apply the paint in earlier work.
An oil painting that comes closest to control and to realistic imagery is Just One of Those Glorious Days. Although the energetic spirit of the artist is visible in all her paintings, this one expresses who she is.
She says, “My paintings are an emotional expression of my life journey…My world is always spiritual. The paintings are coming from an inner aspect of myself. I’m tapping into my total self. I like that they don’t have form because people can look at them and tap into their own life journey. Spiritual to me is all there is.”