Born in Mallorca, Spain, Pilar Pobil moved to Salt Lake City when she married her husband in the 1950s. She’s lived there ever since. She paints women because she wants to make women visible, to emphasize that women can do and be whatever they wish. She came from a very Catholic background where “my mother believed that a woman’s place was at home or in a convent. During my youth in Mallorca, I had to lie all the time to accomplish all I wanted to do in my life.”
I am a self-taught artist who has always worked alone. Although I knew from an early age that I was an artist, I was born in Spain at a time when women were not encouraged to pursue their ambitions. From what I heard of my father and the little I can remember, I believe he might have helped me. However, he was an admiral in the Spanish Navy and was killed in the Civil War, when I was a very young child. My mother was very conservative and I received a convent-school education. I married and came to the United States of America, had three children, and at last, when I was already in my forties, I started to work seriously in my chosen field. It has been, and it is, a wonderful experience. I feel grateful for my strong dedication to the Arts. I am alone now. I am still growing and learning and hope this will continue throughout the rest of my life. I am still on a journey of discovery.
I work in several mediums: oil, acrylic, watercolor, and clay sculpture. Within these different mediums, there is a common denominator that defines my style: I am primarily interested in expression. I use form, color, light and shadow, to define as strongly as I can what I want the viewer to see and feel.
Whether I paint figures or landscapes, flowers or still lifes, I push the essence I perceive as far as I can. Everything speaks to me: faces, body language, the shape of a mountain, the relationship between the mountain and the plain, the sea and the shore, the objects in a still life. I strive to translate this language I see with my painting.
My perception of things changes continually. Because I paint very much from a place of feeling, I may paint a landscape one day and if I paint from the same spot a week later, it will be completely different, more so than any change of weather or time would justify. My work often surprises me by evolving into something very different from its original intent. It is representative, but represents my own reality.