Jacqueline Rada Paintings

At a recent New York City art exhibition at Tribeca's Greenwich Street, I organized as the the US Director of the Royal Institute of Literature, Arts, Music and Cinematography International for its officials and members, Jacqueline Joy Sferra Rada initially impressed her invited guests with her corporate way of dressing, the strictly business way with which she described her paintings, and her natural grace under pressure.

Definitely not at all, the typical image exuded by New York artists struggling in Soho, Noho, and Tribeca areas.

I knew her first when she was working at Wall Street during the day, and feverishly painting art projects after office hours at her 14th Street studio. Her seascapes evoked similar emotions the viewer gets from seeing the works of the Americans, Georgia O'Keefe and Milton Avery. Sferra's quiet shorelines, lonely islets and isolated roads captured a metaphysical serenity. Her skillful use of tonal harmonies of pale blue shades (only the French can do, but not anymore) muted ochres and that distinctive Prince of Wales' grey, produced a soothing, almost healing balm to her viewers.

She is proud of her complex artistic process of annihalating the imperiousness of descriptive conventions to preserve the pureness of the subject's identity.

She defiantly vacuumed all sorts of nuisance, repeated invasions and obnoxious disturbance, so that the viewer only sees in her work the naked beauty of nature.

When she moved to her Tribeca studio/gallery she gave me the honor of viewing her latest commissioned work the "Dream House" which was then in its final stages.

A delicate pastel painting inspired by the architecture of the historical building of the Long Beach Historical Society in New York.

Sferra' keen eye for architectural details and prowess in mixing soft hues showed up particularly well in this painting. The house she has seen and painted sucessfully, portrayed a scene, a moment, at the Long Beach, she loves.

Cynthia Marie Victoria S. von Uthemann

Rada's paintings were on view at the Long Beach Historical Society at 226 West Penn Street.