Pamela Schermer:  The Shape and Color of Research

Painters are not scholars or historians; we comment upon painting by making paintings. My own recent series of paintings are Baroque fantasias that borrow visual codes of beauty from seventeenth-century Italian and Dutch still-life painting. As I do not have access to the original works of art upon which I base my work, I use the library's collections to inform and inspire me.

I spend many hours in the library, returning to the same sources day after day for many years. I study, analyze, and make extensive drawings from reproductions of the works of art that I wish to absorb into my process. The question that I ask is "How did these artists construct their creations?" The answer is more than simply an intellectual exercise. In my work, I try to re-imagine the original rhapsodic pleasures of their making, and I try to find some analogy to my own.