Paula began her journey as an artist in elementary school in classes at The Cleveland Art Institute and The Cleveland Art Museum. She spent her summers in art camp at Cain Park Theatre participating in art, drama, and dance classes, which she continued through high school. At university, she majored in Art and graduated with a specialty in Painting. She left Ohio to live in the San Francisco Bay area where she studied with such artists as Mel Ramos, Lawrence Saunders, Clayton Bailey, and Jacob Lawrence, who became her mentor.
After graduation she traveled for several years first teaching English in Bangkok, Thailand, and studied batik in Penang Malaysia with Chuah Thean Teng. As most traditionally educated art students in the U.S., she was unfamiliar with the genre of Erotic Art. It was on her travels in India that she was introduced to it through the sculptors in Kujaraho. These sculptors, along with the Erotic lithographs of Pablo Picasso, inspired her to create erotic art, which she originally expressed in classical batik. Later she found that watercolor a more conducive medium for this subject. While living abroad, she continued producing art on kibbutz in Israel and in an artist’s cooperative in Munich Germany.
After returning to the U.S., she enrolled in graduate school and resumed her communication with Jacob Lawrence. Her PhD dissertation was a thesis on art as a stimulus for change in society, using the work of Jacob Lawrence as a prime example. She also produced a 16mm documentary on Lawrence which has been shown internationally and on PBS.
Paula was an assistant professor at The Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, Nova Scotia where she taught and produced installations combining paintings and media to express political themes. She returned to California where she taught at the University of California Art Museum in Berkeley and then at California State University in Los Angeles and Long Beach. During this time she showed her work in the San Francisco Bay Area, Portland Oregon, and Seattle, Washington.
She also is a writer of both fiction and non-fiction and has published two books. Work from her most recent exhibit, My Stealthy Freedom—In Support of the Brave Women of Iran was presented by Jay & Co. at the Pioneer Square Art Tour in November, 2014 in Seattle, Washington and HERstory was presented at a private gallery in Index, Washington.
In 2016, Paula joined the faculty of Northern Marianas College in Saipan to teach art. In 2018, a Category 5 Super Typhoon destroyed much of the college and many of her students' homes. Art supplies became scarce, but debris from the catastrophic storm was abundant, hence leading to a journey into Eco-Art and a culminating installation. Upon returning to the Pacific Northwest, Paula continued her art but COVID changed so much of the world, including the world of art.
Throughout her career, Paula has addressed political and environmental issues through Installations that included her paintings combined with sculpture, literary quotes, and music. She aspires for her art to inspire critical thinking and induce social and environmental change.
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The Art of Paula Rosenblum Derrington
About the Artist: Student of Jacob Lawrence and Chuah Thean Teng, Paula's work spans cultures and media