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ABSTRACT ARTIST DEBORAH PASWATERS
AT THE LAS VEGAS ART MUSEUM


Deborah Paswaters: "Realm-Millennium"
November 1999 through January 2000
Fully illustrated catalogue available
(Las Vegas Review Journal, by Ken White)

Up and coming artist Deborah Paswaters believes she and Las Vegas are a perfect fit.

The Orange County based artist, who is having her first solo museum exhibition at the Las Vegas Art Museum, says having her show “Realm – Millennium” here “seems very befitting. I’m very forward-thinking and I get that impression from the city.”

Paswaters, 32, spent six days in November overseeing installation of the exhibit. “I got a feel of the city. I was quite impressed with it. I think Las Vegas has real potential” as a city for art, she says. “it’s up and coming.”

She calls her works abstract/figurative and paints on a large scale. So the museum’s large space lends itself to her art, she says.

It works especially well for her 32-painting installation called “Anchor”, which measures 18 feet by 41 feet.

“It’s a very voluminous space, “Paswaters says. I wanted to create an ambience, which lends a sort of theatrical element.”


Deborah Paswaters, whose first solo
exhibit at the La Vegas Art Museum
has been extended through mid-
January, says her abstract paintings
and Sin City are a natural pair.
[note--no full screen version of this image-Ed.]



Installation shot of Deborah Paswaters'
exhibition at the Las Vegas Art Museum.
 The artist has worked both sides of the abstract and figurative styles, finally combining the two. But Paswaters isn’t sure her viewers can put their finger on that style.

“It’s very definable in the way it can’t be defined,” she says. But her work is remembered. “People come up to me and say they saw my exhibit in , say, New York City, ‘ says Paswaters, whose main representation is by J. Carter Tutwiler and at Marion Meyer Contemporary Art in Laguna Beach, California.

Reactions to her paintings run the gamut. “I’ve heard it all, ‘ she says. “Nothing really surprises me. The best thing I can do as an artist is make people think.”

Las Vegas Art Museum Curator James Mann thinks Paswaters “prefers not to let her disparate styles coalesce…. discernibly, “ he writes in an essay in the show catalog. “She leaves them on the canvas more as she first finds them in her imagination, and lets them address the viewer individually, distinctly, discretely. She likes to create a deliberate disparity….”

The figures in her paintings usually are indistinct, often armless, yet sensual.

Her painting, “,Man, Man-Woman, Woman,” for instance, consists of two nude female figures, one of whose arms extends to the right to overlap the backside of a male figure.

The Venus figure is frequently used in Paswaters’ work. “Double Venus”, featuring two armless female forms reminiscent of Venus de Milo, is even doubled in the form of two sculptures.

“Her figural imagery is unusually serene, yet there can be a great turmoil in the abstract paint, “Mann writes.

In addition to the catalog, a poster of Paswaters’ painting “Art is for Life” is available at the museum’s gift shop. Depicting three female figures with arms upraised, the poster was created especially to be sold at the exhibit. Proceeds will go to the Susan G. Komen Foundation , an organization dedicated to breast-cancer awareness. The poster is endorsed by singer Olivia Newton-John, a breast cancer survivor.

“As an artist, I feel it’s important to give back, “Paswaters says.


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