In Jaquline Cedar’s painting “Not Saying So,” a room is deconstructed into its most elementary parts: a table, a lamp, a carpet, and a window. By abstracting familiar spaces, Cedar disorients the viewer and makes familiar spaces absurd and unreal. Cedar’s practice is concerned with form and shape, and how these elements of painting can create an overall sensation of motion, depth, and atmosphere. Acrylic on canvas

Jaqueline Cedar

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My paintings depict life-size figures interacting amidst abstract fields of shape and color. Unsure of their surroundings, these figures make rote attempts to engage one another both physically and psychologically as their gestures are echoed and amplified by their environment. They have strong inclinations toward action yet limited mobility. They find themselves absorbed by their own thoughts and yet compelled to engage with their surroundings. They are filled with a sense of impending doom and still uncertain of their purpose. As these figures acknowledge the absurdity of their circumstances they respond distinctly with behaviors that reflect their will and needs. Some are distracted by the task at hand. Some ask questions and observe closely. Some assess the current conditions and look for a way out. The paintings address such issues as self-awareness, control, and immobility, staging a potential but arrested movement toward knowledge or engagement. By arranging figures as armatures for hanging line and color, my paintings construct scenarios in which subjects behave both as backdrops and participants, observers and actors. Adjacent structures of shape and value at once form and collapse, advancing an overall sensation of motion, depth, and atmosphere.