Paula Baader and The Liminal Language of Paint

Let’s start at the beginning, we see you grew up in Germany – could you tell us a bit about where you grew up, and do you think this has affected the work you create?

I grew up in Hamburg, in Northern Germany. I find it difficult to clearly trace how this has shaped my work – collecting the pieces or connecting the dots feels elusive. My visual language has evolved over the years and is really a general reflection of everything I’ve experienced.

One thing that does come to mind is that my dad worked in advertising and had a real mastery of words – it did create an early awareness of the complexity and figurativeness of language. The abundance of proverbs, metaphors and turns of phrase felt almost painterly to me.

Because English isn’t my first language, I’ve always had a heightened curiosity toward words – especially the naming of streets or places, which often evoke inner images and atmospheres. I think these subtle linguistic impressions have quietly shaped my visual vocabulary.

Your work sits in the space between abstraction and figuration. What compels you to explore that liminal threshold?

I like to oscillate in the space between abstraction and figuration. That liminal threshold is exciting to me, where things appear and disappear at once.

Inner and outer worlds, everyday scenes and objects become transformed and re-encountered in an unfamiliar way. It’s a process of dissecting and reassembling, hinting at a storyline embedded in thin layers of paint.           

You studied at The Royal College of Art in London, to what extent does this city affect your work?

I loved living in London and I would say it affected my work quite profoundly – both thematically and in terms of the atmosphere the city evokes in me. Moving there in my twenties gave me a sense of freedom and the mental space to explore and shape my artistic identity. I was a young woman in a huge city that I was trying to grasp and make my own – a situation full of tension, potential and material for painting.

How do you enter the headspace where you create your art?

I’m quite used to switching headspaces quickly, so it often happens rather fluidly. Having worked in a home studio for a few years now, I am familiar with moving between painting – being entirely in my own world – and then suddenly cooking dinner or walking my dog.

Some days loud music helps me slip into the right state of mind, other days I prefer silence, apart from my dog’s soft snoring in the background.

Painting large canvases can be very physical, so regular stretching or even a little dance around the studio helps me get ready. In general, I have a busy mind that moves in many directions at once, but when I paint I usually enter a kind of hyper-focus. Then the brush on canvas becomes the centre of everything.

Viewers often only notice the figurative elements of your paintings after spending time with them. What role does slow discovery play in your work?

I like the idea that someone might not immediately know what they are looking at and feels slightly disoriented at first, focusing only on the mark-making. And then, only after spending more time with the painting, bodily elements begin to appear. That sense of slow discovery feels important to me – it’s almost an antidote to the way we usually consume images in daily life.

This phenomenon also mirrors how I often work on my paintings. I usually begin with a rough idea, a feeling, and once I start, the painting enters a push-and-pull process until a narrative slowly reveals itself, bringing a certain order into the chaos.

You’ve spoken about starting with a sketch “that forces itself” onto you. Can you describe what that moment of urgency feels like?

I rarely sketch on paper. It’s more that I carry mental images with me, shaped by collecting and sorting through an ever-growing archive of photos, snippets and things I want to paint. Painting in general feels urgent to me – it always has. Especially when beginning a new work, it feels almost relieving to get the rough idea out of my head. It creates space and calm so I can continue working with more clarity.

Your paintings often seem to carry a strong emotional undercurrent. How do inner states or moods shape the development of a piece?

Introspection and inner states are really the backbone of my paintings – at first maybe only subconsciously and now more deliberately. I like the wording ‘emotional undercurrent’ because the imagery feels so visceral. Emotions and memories move like currents, always shifting, flowing, resurfacing.

I don’t think my momentary emotions dominate a painting, but they do shape how I approach it.

What do you think motivates you to create your work?

I like the idea that when I can’t understand or change something in my life or in the world – which is quite often – I can at least find a painterly solution, a way of solving the puzzle through the act of painting. With each work I begin again, never fully understanding, slowly and patiently connecting the dots.

Life is unpredictable, but painting feels simpler in a way: It is always canvas and paint.

Where is your sanctuary?

Walking through a city – preferably London – is a kind of sanctuary for me. It feels both elegant and gritty, familiar and unknowable at the same time. When I walk there, I slip into a strange flow state where thoughts pass through me instead of getting stuck. It feels grounding and empowering, almost like stepping outside myself for a moment.

Do you have any artistic themes that you keep returning to, if so how does repetition of these themes allow meaning to deepen or shift?

I keep returning to certain themes that feel almost inexhaustible to me. For years I’ve been interested in a psychogeographic approach and in the figure of the flâneuse – written about so beautifully by Lauren Elkin. How walking through a city, devouring it and remaining open to the unexpected can inform painting. Travelling bodies and travelling minds, my work often circles around this idea, weaving things together into a kind of kaleidoscopic tapestry of experiences.

There is also a certain nostalgia that keeps resurfacing: Familiar landscapes, childhood places and memorabilia I return to with a wider lens. Revisiting them allows the meaning to shift over time, each return reveals something new while echoing what was once known.

Finally, what are your hopes for the future?

Artistically, I hope to show my paintings more in London and internationally and work with a gallery I can grow with over time.

And beyond art, I’d love to work with animals at some point, perhaps in an animal sanctuary or through charities dedicated to animal protection. If there is a way to weave that into my painting practice one day, even better.