Isabel Carrió - Statement


	My paintings are abstract works using mixed media on canvas. I am interested in the overlay of various surfaces and the visual effects that result from this process. I create my pieces by applying different layers using mediums like acrylic paint, ink, mulberry paper, crushed charcoal and wax. I work with a group of ten to twenty canvases at the same time. The pieces start to “talk to each other” and I begin to see relationships that I could never have set out to create. I have to react quickly when the paintings start to interact, to have a conversation. I also spend a long time simply observing my canvases. It takes time to find the piece’s principal form. It is always abstract, animated and it possesses an identity. Eventually I finish completing the surface and no sooner than I’ve sat down to look at the work, I have to jump up because it’s clear how many things must be eliminated or adjusted. Elimination has become very central to my painting. I build by eliminating and add by subtracting. The realization that the painting is done comes suddenly. I can no longer add or subtract. Once the series is done, I let each painting stand on its own, and speak for it self.

		“Palimpsest”
		by Charles Hinman, New York, N. Y.
	The painting of Isabel Carrio is a relentless search for light and a respect for surface. The artist introduces images and color made with a brush or other drawing tools. The forms are sometimes cut scratched through paint to reveal layers underneath. These markings are continuously buried in the ground to allow new layers of images in a way sometimes impossible to determine which layer is on top or underneath. She rubs out as if on a slate on which to write again. The effect is to transform the canvas into the look of an object from an ancient civilization, or an old wall of timeless origin. The canvas is then a palimpsest. Layers of images are read with those still partially visible underneath. The completed painting display a remarkable infusion of new strokes that have spontaneity and immediacy at once with forms that one feels are archaic and have always been there.