Paula deJoie
Paula Price deJoie was born and raised in the Crenshaw district of Los Angeles and moved to her father’s hometown of Berkeley to attend Cal where she studied Fine Art and Law. Growing up, Paula was blessed to be exposed to a variety of artists from Charles White to Elizabeth Catlett to Nigeria’s Twin Seven Seven and to many other prominent black artists who exhibited in the historic Brockman Gallery run by brothers Alonzo Davis and Dale Davis. Both of her parents created art on the side at home, so she always felt that being an artist was a real and valued career option.
As a student in the UC Berkeley Art Department in the 70’s, all of Paula’s professors were white and male. They loved her abstracts and figure drawings, however when she painted political subject matter, they didn’t quite know how to respond. She felt very much alone and was thrilled when David Bradford created the Black Art Department and Malaquias Montoya headed up the Chicano Art Center in two redwood shingled buildings off campus. The energy there was welcoming and invigorating, and Paula felt free to express whatever was inside her.
Paula recently completed training to lead healing art circles and is focused on providing Elders with Sacred Spaces in which to tell their stories and share their wisdom with pen and brush. Her paintings in this year’s TBWIG are reflective of her healing arts journey.
As an Elder now, Paula is focused upon reassessing her life’s journey and reimagining how she wishes to express herself in her next chapter. From childhood on, Paula has turned to art and writing as healing balms, and she continues to apply art as a powerful and effective tool for transformation. The paintings exhibited in this year’s TBWIG reflect Paula’s growing connection to Spirit, to Mother/Father God and especially to the Goddess inside each of us.
Paula heard, somewhere along her journey, that “there’s nothing stronger than a broken woman who has put herself back together.” Black Women have carried the brunt of our people’s pain for generations and Paula believes that each one of us deserves to put down that heavy load and celebrate not only our odds-defying strength but our beauty and compassion, our creativity and our wit, our intelligence and our spirituality, and most of all, our dreams yet to be fulfilled. Beginning with self-love and appreciation, and supported with the love and encouragement of our connective circles, we can have it all…we can finally live our lives overflowing with joy and abundance. Paula hopes that her paintings support all Sisters on this creative healing path towards whatever success looks like to each one of us. And so it is.
