BLUE IMMERSION brings together two artists whose distinct practices converge around themes of water, familiar imagery, and the feelings that landscapes evoke. Through painting, they investigate how our natural environment shapes memory, emotion, and ecological consciousness.
Gabriella Pulsifer’s vibrant paintings celebrate the swimming holes in and around Austin - places of refuge and natural beauty. Working with unexpected palettes and meditative forms, she reimagines these ecological places through a graphic sensibility that combines environmental insight with visual poetry. Her work honors our region's natural treasures while beckoning viewers toward sustainable action. Each painting is both a celebration and a call for conservation.
Paul Schexnayder approaches painting through memory. Beginning with familiar images - roadside structures, maps, childhood objects - he layers, obscures, and partially erases them until what remains is not the object itself, but the feeling of having known it. Drawing from Southern landscape and American visual culture, his paintings hold onto something while allowing it to fade at the same time. Schexnayder’s work also captures how atmospheric conditions - water vapor, light, weather - continually transform our perception of the world. His vertical brushstrokes drape the artwork with old stories and memories.
Together, these painters explore immersion in its many forms: immersion in water and nature, immersion in memory and atmosphere, immersion in the landscapes - real and emotional - that shape us.