Current work by Deborah Caiola - Philadelphia Painter
(updated May 2008)

Deborah Caiola exhibits work from a series of narrative paintings which utilizes images of birds to tell stories about social, mythological, and spiritual themes of her life.  The subjects of the paintings are anthropomorphic birds imbued with double meanings and ideas which refer beyond the canvas to issues which are relevant in our world today.

Deborah uses the bird image as a universal figure, familiar and ordinary, yet mysterious and inspiring, onto which she can impose concerns of our day. This series of paintings is a departure from human portraiture which binds Caiola to the individuality of her subject and to her perspective of the subject?s character.

Deborah enjoys the liberty of working largely from her imagination for this bird series. Because of that, the birds can be part bower, part finch, and part pigeon.  She has also been referencing bird illustration and ornithology books, photographs, and birds outside her house and studio where there are an array of pigeons, sparrows,  wrens, vireos, robins, and an occasional cardinal.  In addition, sketches are derived from the large collection of stuffed birds at the Wagner Institute of Philadelphia.

Painting technique is important to Deborah Caiola.  While surrealism informs her work, she strives to achieve a painting style that fuses an organic, atmospheric, illusory effect of paint (early twentieth century realists along with Odd Nerdrum, Eakins, Antonio Lopez) with a more graphic and illustrative style. (the pop art and low brow movement). With this body of work brighter complimentary colors play off of neutral backgrounds and some paintings are monochromatic only accenting the composition with a complimentary color.