Theresa Passarello

Water, memory, and hidden words: these are the threads running through Theresa Passarello's artistic practice. In this interview, she shares how secret journal writings, water imagery, and the tension between intuition and structure come together to form paintings that hold more than the eye can see.

You were born in the Bahamas, studied civil engineering at Waterloo, then arts at Concordia… how have these very different experiences shaped your vision as an artist?

Everyone has their own unique life experiences that shape who they are, how they see the world and what they want to say.  I only lived in the Bahamas until I was two years old but I like to think that it had a profound effect on me and is at the heart of my attraction and fascination with water imagery in my art.  Although I did not practice engineering for very long, it is a big part of my identity and the rigorous methodology and mathematical mindset that were fostered by my studies factor into my painting process.  There is a constant push-pull when I am creating between my more structured engineering self and my more responsive/intuitive artistic self.

How would you describe your artistic practice to someone discovering it for the first time?  

My artistic practice explores themes of memory and language often referenced through the metaphor of water.  I am primarily a process-driven painter of large figurative works in spaces of transformation or limned moments of consciousness but I also include smaller works on mylar, collage and installation as part of my artistic practice.  

Water appears as a recurring metaphor in your work. Can you tell us about the hidden meaning of water in your paintings?  

Water appears in my paintings as a metaphor for ephemeral memory.  I am fascinated with the elusive quality of memory, its transient ebb and flow.  A memory can resurface unexpectedly, stirred up through a scent or a song; it takes shape, lingers and then disappears.  Water provides me with an elastic space to explore these ideas.

You use excerpts from your personal journals as an underpainting. Is this a form of exorcism, or a way of giving an invisible soul to the canvas?

I love the idea of it being a form of exorcism! I initiated the practice of starting my canvases with an underpainting of journal writings after my research introduced me to literary palimpsests.  Palimpsests are ancient manuscripts that were written on vellum.  The writing was erased and the vellum reused over and over again with traces of these layered writings eventually resurfacing.  My underpaintings are an attempt to create my own personal palimpsest of memories.  They are another means of communicating ephemeral memory and the process itself gives me something structured but unexpected to respond to with my mark-making.  Perhaps in a way, I am giving my paintings an invisible soul, with my secrets and stories buried underneath the surface.

Can you walk us through your process, from the initial idea to the final image?

I am a collector of water images and quotes.  Both inspire me and act as points of departure for my paintings.  I sift through my images and quotes and find something that resonates and then play around with the composition depending on the canvas size I choose.  I sketch it out a few times so that I become familiar with the image and understand what will be the general structure of my painting.  I use thin washes of burnt sienna for my underpainting, writing lines from my personal journals, encouraging drips and blurred words, turning the canvas after each layer of writing to make almost a grid or a weaving of words.  After I am satisfied with my palimpsest underpainting, I sketch in the composition.  I start painting the image but concurrently respond to the underwriting, allowing it to come through in some places and erasing it in other places.  I respond to my mark-making allowing the text and figure to slide in and out of focus.  In the end, the writing is mostly illegible but still recognizable as some form of language. 

What role does intuition play in your practice?

Intuition is used in my practice with how I respond to the underwriting.  I never know what forms the layers of writing will create or what forms I will be attracted to when I am painting.  I go by feel.  In one of my paintings, I had pulled up all the oval forms in the writing without even realizing it.  It was a painting of a young woman swimming underwater and there were all these linked Os throughout the waterscape.  When I delivered the painting to the collector's home, I was asked who the girl in the painting was and I had an aha moment when I responded "a friend of my daughter's, her name is Oona".  Sometimes intuition steers us in directions that we only understand later on.

Name an artist you particularly admire and tell us why.

Peter Doig is an artist who I greatly admire.  Doig's layered, dreamy figurative/landscape paintings move between abstraction and representation in an exciting  and evocative way.  I love the ambiguity of his work, how he doesn't feel the need to define everything and how you find beauty and contemplation in the quiet corners of his paintings.  There is a nostalgic quality to them that really resonates with me.

What are you currently working on? Any upcoming exhibitions?

I am currently working on a series of paintings and collages for an upcoming group exhibition A Collective Gaze/Un Regard Collectif at the Maison de la Culture Marie-Uguay in Montreal opening on October 31st 2026.  I am part of an Artist Salon and the exhibition presents the artwork of seven fellow artists from this valued group.  The work I will be showing is inspired by small drawings and collages that I initially created for the Carnet Project at the Maison de la Culture Marie-Uguay in 2023 so it feels like a full circle moment.

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To learn and see more of Theresa Passarello's work: website + Instagram.