MEERA PALIA

I am an abstract painter and collage artist now based in Margate, UK. I have always been attracted to spontaneity and improvisation in art forms and have felt a strong need to create abstract art that feels ‘free’ and made ‘in the moment’. My paintings are therefore unplanned- they evolve out of the colours, textures, marks and moods that emerge throughout the process and whatever emotions or thoughts I am carrying with me at the time. I am basically aiming for the painting equivalent of a jazz jam or a flamenco improvisation rather than a polished composition/choreographed act. I love the rhythmic, gestural, physical act of painting, when it feels like my hand is freestyle dancing! I will often paint to music, trying to bring the energy of an interesting beat into my work. I particularly like to experiment with building up and scratching away different layers of paint to reveal some of those underneath. Painting feels like an enquiry, a dialogue with the unknown. Sometimes more recognisable ‘forms’ such as figures or landscapes start to emerge. Sometimes they do not. It is the sense of the unexpected and endless possibilities for the re-invention of a painting that I find so compelling. Which is why I often can't leave them alone and will gladly transform old work into something new. 

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Most of the paintings you will see here are acrylic paintings- this allows me to work quickly in the way that I have described above. However, I have a mixed media approach and will also incorporate paper or material collage and oil crayon scribblings into my work too. I will scratch surfaces with the ends of brushes and palette knives as well as using fast expressive brushstrokes. Inspired by abstract expressionist painters I love such as Joan Mitchell and Lee Krasner, I thrive on making marks that feel 'alive',  intuitive and authentic and certainly in the initial stages, action precedes thought, a refreshing reversal from my approach to the rest of life! 

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I am mostly self-taught (my university studies and career in education were in sociology and philosophy). However, I have attended many inspiring informal abstract art courses at London institutions over the last decade- City Lit, Morley College, Central St Martins, Mary Ward Centre and others- and am now at a time in my life where my paint brushes and palette knives are insisting on my full attention. I hope you will find some work here that you like or that interests you. Please do not hesitate to get in touch with questions.

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