Deanna Sirlin's artwork begins with her perceiving something in reality that is beyond the literal and moving it into abstraction and back again. She has been known to turn an abstraction on its head.

 

Her paintings study the conceptualization of plan view architecture filtered though the attributes of imagination, color and light. The geometric abstractions that Sirlin calls up in her collages are taken from the world and repurposed in her mind, filtered by color she has found in pop culture, in signs, and in fashion.

 

She gives a nod to what has come before her in the traditions of geometric abstraction and figuration and in doing so creates a dialogue between her work and the past.

 

Images constructed using the technique of collaged papers and cloth that meld together a vision of shapes on transparent substrates may initially present themselves as pure geometric abstraction, but a longer look will uncover urban scenes, gardens and other views of contemporary life upended by Sirlin in these works. These artworks flip in and out of representation, in and out of abstraction, and the cause and effect of flux, using an energy that stems from the nontraditional colors and strident coloration found in contemporary life.