We recently connected with Deanna Sirlin and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Deanna thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

My large-scale installation “Retracings” (1999) at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta was a pivotal work for me. The process of making this work changed my perspective on painting, representation, scale, and the relationship of the artwork to the viewer. “Retracings” is a transparent and site-specific work that fits on all the windows of the High’s Richard Meier building. The front of the Museum is comprised of banks of curved windows that look out onto Peachtree Street in Midtown Atlanta. I translated my paintings into a new, monumental scale, and imaged the paintings onto transparency film that fit on 265 windows on the second, third, and fourth floors of the museum that face Peachtree Street. I titled this work “Retracings” because I saw it as a way into my own painting. I felt I was literally retracing my own painting. I wanted the viewer to be inside the work, to see each color as it was made by my hand with a loaded brush.

Creating this work was more of a challenge than I expected because of the state of imaging technology at the time. Anyone could make things bigger, but I wanted no pixels to be visible in this work. Software that could achieve the scale I wanted without pixilation did not exist, but I found a fabricator who took on the challenge of custom mixing software for this work and finding a partner to help produce it, Ilfochrome in the UK.

Several significant things happened because of “Retracings”. My relationship to architecture and scale changed because of this work. “Retracings” is 60 x 90 feet and is in dialogue with the architecture. When I was testing the transparency for color and saturation I put one panel on the museum’s window. I had been a representational painter, finding abstraction in the landscape. When I tested the transparency, I could see the world through my work and therefore did not need to put it in the painting. I realized that I had created a new lens through which to experience both the exterior world and the interior of the museum. It was at this moment I understood that my work no longer needed the representational aspect. I relinquished the pictorial landscape, though my work still reflects and is influenced by nature.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’ve been interested in art for my entire life. As a young child growing up in New York City, my parents took me to MoMA, the Met, the Guggenheim where I found great joy in looking at 20th century paintings. When I was six, my neighbor took me on Saturdays to art classes at the Brooklyn Museum, where I made pencil drawings in the galleries. I received my MFA in Painting from Queens College, CUNY 44 years ago, and I’ve been a working artist ever since.

Although I am a painter, my life as an artist has expanded greatly in terms of medium. For the last 20 years, I have been creating large-scale public artworks like “Retracings”. Five years ago, I also started making video works that combine painting, light, and movement. What sets me apart is that I work at multiple scales, in multiple media, and across platforms using color and abstraction to create a dialogue with the architectural spaces my works inhabit. I’m proud that the permanent public works I have done around Atlanta and elsewhere, including works in lobbies, on the exterior of a fire station, and on the side of a residential building, are there for people to encounter, experience, an engage with in the course of their daily lives.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

In 2007, I broke every bone in my left ankle. I had just signed a contract to create a large-scale artwork for the Science Building at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, GA. The work is a large-scale transparency, 4 feet by 40 feet, titled “Dance”. It is a memorial to Elizabeth R. Griffin, a young student who died tragically when she contracted a disease while working at the Yerkes Center. Even though I could not walk or stand, I managed to create an important artwork that was well-received by both the college community and the commissioners on time and within the budget.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

Being an artist is my vocation, not my job. I have no choice in this: it is my life and who I am.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.deannasirlin.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/deannasirlinart/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DeannaSirlin
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deanna-sirlin-68128814/

Image Credits

Image 1 + 2: “Wandering In”, 2023, on Off the Wall @725 Ponce in Atlanta, Georgia Photo: Sirlin
Image 3 + 4 : “Watermark”, 2022 Photo: Sirlin
Image 5: “Strata”, 2020-21, Centro de Arte e Cultura Fundação Eugénio de Almeida, Evora, Portugal Photos: Francisco Pereira Gomes © Fundação Eugénio de Almeida
Image 6: Hand at “Strata” 2021, @ Fundação Eugénio de Almeida Photo: Vera Vieira da Silva
Image 7 : “Borders of Light and Water”, 2022 at Palazzo Bembo, Venice, Italy Photo: Elliot King;
Image 8: “Retracings”, 1999, collection High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia Photo: Mike Jensen

All images courtesy the artist