Cetiva Rose Daboling, 29, has an artistic style different from what the community is used to seeing at City Hall, and that’s a good thing. Her surrealist paintings reflect a world created by her imagination, emotion and thought.
Using bright colors in many of her works, images portray unique worlds or scenes and still life objects combined with animals.
SHOCASE Board Member Diane Gerson likes the diversity of artistic style in Sweet Home.
“It’s different, and I like that,” she said of Daboling’s work. “I think every show we have is different and that’s the best part of it. I think the important thing is that we give the opportunity for artists to show their work.”
Daboling, like many true artists, has been interested in art since childhood.
“I mostly traced things or tried to copy other things,” she said about her childhood experiments. “It wasn’t until high school that I actually started doing my own stuff.”
Much of her work, particularly all that is on display at City Hall, is done with acrylic paint. She pointed out she prefers to use the Liquitex brand.
“It works way nicer. It’s brighter, it has a better finish, it doesn’t crack,” she explained.
But by perusing her web page at Deviant Art, it’s clear her artistic interests go beyond just paintings because one can find samples also of her paper and clay crafts, as well as drawings, digital art and literary perusals. Here is one of her writings:
“Shadow Shadow of the tree
I sit beneath your canopy
The sun shines and leaves glitter
As breezes send them all a flitter
I hear the birds and cheep and twitter
As I sit in this dark dappled sea
Observing the world above me”
Daboling seems to take particular enjoyment in nature, noting she often had to stay indoors during her childhood and now prefers to be outside if possible.
On one wall at City Hall, three of her paintings complement each other with their deep greens, blues and golden yellow. They draw the eye to examine each work and perhaps contemplate what story may lie behind each painting.
On the left, a skeleton sitting in the desert releases a cloud of something into the starry night sky. This, Daboling said, was painted after her boyfriend’s family was murdered. On her Deviant page, a much more internal thought process is explained about the painting.
“I took my heart in my hands,” she writes. “I could imagine its warmth and beat as I held it close to me. Then I held out my arms and offered it to the stars. From my heart little blue butterflies began to form and fly away till they formed a large cloud and my hands were left empty.”
In the center, “Deep Forest” hides an old tree man (which she calls a “trent”), while more brightly painted images of mushrooms and bullseye fungus draw the eye in for closer inspection. And to the right hangs a small painting of a spotted snail, which she said was inspired by a snail her boyfriend’s father had sculpted from soapstone.
Other works on display are more dreamy, making it clear that Daboling is an imaginative young woman who uses her talent to explore thought and emotion.
Most of her work is created over a period of years, oftentimes starting as sketches.
“The little trent was like a sketch I had made,” she said. “That’s where a lot of my things come from. I’ll just draw it out first. I’ll just doodle.”
Daboling is expecting her second child next month, providing a sister to her first daughter, Unity, who also dabbles in art.
“She tries to draw little people, her little potato people,” Daboling said. “She’s like, ‘They don’t have butts.’”
She describes her daughter as “smart and pushy,” a 5-year-old whose bedroom is filled with her own childlike artwork.
“It’s funny because I’ll be painting with her sometimes and she’ll tell me how bad my art is,” Daboling said with a laugh. “When she was a little younger, she would just spend so long just, like, all the little places filling them up with color. I have some of my favorite pieces from her, just these big poster boards covered in splotches of different colored paint everywhere.”
A reception for the new exhibit at City Hall will be held from 4-5 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 12. She will be selling some of her work with a price range between roughly $150 to $1,200. Daboling’s web page is found at deviantart.com/cetivarose. She does commissions, too.