On Line: An In-depth Essay

By Deborah Krieger

Standing in the ocean in the dead of night with the water up to your calves, you might see something like this: a slender ribbon of colorful light weaving its way deep below the surface of the water. Inspired by the phenomenon that makes that sight possible—bioluminescence—Paula Cahill transmutes the aura of wonder from these observations into her large-scale paintings. These works reflect her combined interest in marine ecologies, her command of form and depth, and her deep knowledge of the imagery and storytelling of artistic practices and canons dating back millennia.

The particular evanescence and spontaneity of catching a glimpse of those glowing organisms is immediately recognizable in works like Arrangement. Set against the near-ultramarine blue— Cahill’s preferred choice of backdrop—a single multihued line guides our eye around the composition. The overall effect is reminiscent of the bilateral symmetry so common in nature and punctuated with small chaotic coils. For each of these paintings, Cahill mixes between eighty and one hundred gradients of color, connecting these disparate flashes of unique pigment into a seamless, rhythmic line.

Arrangement, oil on canvas, 48 x 48 inches, 2017 (Photo Credits: Karen Mauch)

In paintings like One Liner, Every Way, and Cartouche, the dominating line against that vivid blue ground is more muscular, with the careful application of gradual gradients serving to guide the eye through the path of the painting. In each of these works, the subject line overlaps with itself, creating depth through the establishment of spatial relations and a clear indication of foreground and background. While in Every Way and Cartouche the compositions fold in on themselves, sealing themselves off from our prying eyes, in One Liner we are encouraged to get lost in the labyrinth, using the little branched-off curves as entry and exit points. We are invited in, and we become absorbed, and then we are encouraged to leave.

One-liner, oil on canvas, 36 x 36 inches, 2020 (Photo credit: Karen Mauch)

Ravel III takes Cahill’s established vocabulary of the meticulous overlapping linear path made up of rainbow gradients against a solid ground and turns it on its head. The work particularly reveals an inventive willingness to play with depth and challenge the flat surface of the picture plane. Where the coils of rainbow line are usually central to the painting, guiding us in careful mazelike fashion around and around rhythmically, with Ravel III we are set adrift, left to find a way into the painting from an entirely different angle. The line seems to pour itself into the painting, drawn into our view inexorably by gravity. Just as Cahill’s usual form seems to have fallen on its side, trailing its red and orange entry path in its wake, we are knocked off-kilter, taken to a place where our viewing position seems impossible. If we aren’t looking down at the tracks of bioluminescence through the surface of the ocean, what is it we are looking at? And how are we looking at it? What was soothing and even sensual in paintings like Cartouche becomes unsettling in Ravel III, rendering us lost in space, and without a shift in subject matter.

Ravel III, oil an panel, 24 x 24 inches, 2019 (Photo credit: Karen Mauch)

Player and Divergence similarly expand Cahill’s formula, taking the form of the swirling, swooping line and altering it in exciting ways. In Player, Cahill takes a holistic approach to the interplay of positive and negative space; she also takes a step back to imagine linkages among the discrete elliptical linear patterns that occupy their own paintings. In Divergence, Cahill uses two intermingling and overlapping lines to great effect, creating a jittery, electric energy.

Player, oil on canvas, 36 x 24 inches, 2019 (Photo credit: Karen Mauch)

There are moments in Cahill’s body of work that, despite maintaining her recognizable compositional vocabulary, intentionally recall classic aspects of works by other artists, albeit with an unexpected, ironic twist. The alternating circular and rectangular forms present in Inquiry reference Robert Mothwell’s Spanish Elegy Series; where Motherwell’s work concerns the violence of the Spanish Civil War, Inquiry turns away from the violent world of man to the more contemplative world of nature. Meanwhile Insomnia, a work whose line quality reflects its emotional state, also functions as a clever art-historical reference. The repetitive, spiraling thought patterns associated with insomnia—the lack of sleep, the pacing back and forth, the tossing and turning—are also a highly abstracted interpretation of a Roman sculpture depicting the Sleeping Ariadne of Greek myth. Where Spanish Elegy mourns, Inquiry soothes. Ariadne sleeps as her lover betrays her; as if reflecting this turmoil, Insomnia crackles with tension and stress.

Insomnia, oil on canvas, 48 x 60 inches, 2018 (Photo credit: Karen Mauch)

It is in paintings like Night Diving where Cahill’s fascination with bioluminescence, and the patterns of motion created by these organisms beneath the surface of the water, turns what may have seemed like an abstract exercise in color, line, and form into a dreamily naturalistic remembrance of scientific phenomena. Each carefully applied swatch of color comes to take on a single moment in time—a single gleaming snatch of a second where a bioluminescent organism is visible to the naked eye through layers of ocean water before it vanishes once more. The effect of Cahill’s use of gradients, and how these gradients continue along a singular linear path, is that Cahill is painting across time. Each glowing organism travels along a path it is also creating, almost replicating the surreal quality of a time-lapse photograph as it simultaneously moves along a path it creates just barely visible to us, just out of reach. She depicts not only where they are and where they have been, but also where they will go.

By linking her use of the visual traces of bioluminescence with historical or art-historical subject matter as in Cartouche, Inquiry, and Insomnia, Cahill’s body of work argues for the fundamental importance of these mysterious organisms in the sea that created life on earth, from which all humankind eventually developed. Paula Cahill follows that one shimmering line, wherever it may lead—a line that is more than the sum of its parts.

Night Diving, oil on canvas, 16 x 20 inches, 2019 (Photo credit: Karen Mauch)