Erin: What are you curious about?
Cecelia: The beauty (and tragedy) of life, and how we embrace that, or not, in every moment.
Erin: Describe your art and describe your process.
Cecelia: Thinking about things in my life or in the world…painting what I think…scratching it off…thinking about it some more…painting it back in, a little different. Slowly building up an idea and a surface…or tearing them down, which is sort of the same thing.
Erin: If you could collaborate with absolutely anyone who would it be and what would it look like?
Cecelia: Well, there are so many great artists, great persons, I would love to sit in with. John Cage came to mind, for some reason. We are sort of unlikely collaborators but it would be a terrific experience.
Erin: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?
Cecelia: “No one asked you to be an artist”.
Cecelia showing us her work in her Carroll Gardens studio
Erin: We know you joined the Peace Corps and brought a dog back with you from the Dominican Republic. What’s the story behind that?
Cecelia: Oh, I was thinking about leaving her actually, I thought the transition to the US would be too difficult for her. But a few weeks before my departure she killed someone’s chicken. And I knew I had to take her, or she would be killed, or spend her whole life tied up. So off we went together.
Erin: Of all the books on the shelf behind you, what is the one that you can’t live with out?
Cecelia: Ha! So many good books. I treasure my Wallace Stevens, “The Palm at the End of the Mind”.
Erin: How do you make your space work for you and how important is the perfect setup?
Cecelia: The perfect setup would be lovely…but you've got to do something while you’re waiting for it to show up. So in the meantime I work in the second bedroom…
Erin: What color in your palette do you use up the fastest?
Cecelia: White.
Erin: Did you ever feel like giving up? Why didn’t you?
Cecelia: Sure, I give up often.
Cecelia's painting clogs
