(upbeat music) - A lot of my paintings you can perceive danger, or something unsettling in it, or you can perceive fun, too.

That weird tension that is this fun or is this dangerous?

I'm not quite sure, I really like that, that tension, 'cause that's kind of like childhood, you know?

Or adulthood, really.

(laughing) Is this good or is it dangerous?

(laughing) You know?

(upbeat music) I started doing a series on family snapshots.

So one is this boy and his grandma.

I just like the energy between them, and how she looks a little bit annoyed, and she's put on a little bit of a smile.

(laughing) (scratching) And then I got fascinated with painting animals that no longer exist, and these are old, you know, marine dinosaurs, and I thought well that's fun.

Put it all together, see where it goes.

(upbeat music) I think I'm gonna try something completely different with that sky.

It just evolves as I paint.

I don't have a preconception, really.

I just have to let it evolve, and then it's more interesting to me.

(upbeat music) And then the stripes take it out of being a landscape.

It becomes something else, you know.

More like a dream scape.

It's kind of like grandma has taken her grandson on an outing, kind of like Mary Poppins.

(laughing) Yeah, I like her a lot.

She looks so crabby, but in a good way.

Okay, I think I'm gonna go... (sliding) (paper moving) It just adds another little weird thing to work with.

Seems like things are flying through the air, kind of.

Which is sort of cool.

(paper moving) I like it, I like whatever it's going.

(upbeat music) So, I grew up with art all around me.

All my life I saw my mom work in her studio, she was a ceramicist my whole childhood, and when I was a teenager she began painting California landscapes, and I thought well I'll do something different.

She doesn't do photography, really, I'll do photography.

And I thought I wanna go to New York, and I'm gonna be a fashion photographer.

Which is an insane idea if you don't have an uncle, or a parent in the business.

(upbeat music) And I just kept at it, I didn't give up.

I had talent, but I was very persistent.

(upbeat music) I loved it, I really loved it.

I photographed Moby, I photographed Kate Moss, Lenny Kravitz, Morgan Freeman.

I photographed a lot of music people for Interview Magazine.

I did a lot of album covers, too, but I think what fascinated me about it is it's a theater.

There's a drama happening.

There's a story being told.

It's costumes, and drama, and lighting, and characters.

So to me, I was the director of a play, and it's a narrative image I'm making, and I carried that right into painting.

(upbeat piano music) My paintings are narratives.

You can look at it and decide what it is for you.

(upbeat piano music) And it features women, or girls, or children, and there's always animals involved, and they're interacting with the people.

They're protecting the people.

The animals are really special, because they're the goodness, they're what's pure.

Where people are deeply flawed.

This is my aunt's book, "Wonders of Life on Earth", and I find a lot of cool stuff in here 'cause it's old.

The photography's not the best.

They're sort of blurred, and the color's kind of weird.

That's why I like that too, the weird color.

So I'll get all inspired by these.

Maybe they'll show up in a painting.

Several of them have, already.

This is a photograph of a, what appears to be a flying koala, sailing through the air, and I put him in a painting called, "Jungle", and in that painting my niece is throwing up her hair, and then this flying koala next to her.

So it looks like he's going to land on her, but in a very good way, you know?

I don't think he's gonna hurt her.

They mean well, all the animals.

(laughing) (shutter clicking) There's something about the family snapshot that really freezes time and tells a story of relationships that we'll never know, but you know, you're just trying to dent the surface of a story.

(upbeat music) And I looked at old family photos, including my own, and I painted my daughters playing on a bed, and it's just such a sweet memory from the past, right?

There's memories that aren't so sweet, but the sweet ones you wanna grab onto and immortalize them in a way.

Then I was looking at all my mother's photo albums.

(upbeat music) This one is Easter Sunday, and my brother is in a burgundy blazer.

He's about six, and I'm about four, and we're in front of a red and white car.

Well, it's just, the colors are perfect.

The diagonal of the car, I mean, my mother's an artist, right?

And she composed it perfectly.

Anne Bullwinkle is my mother.

She studied fashion design in college, and then within two years she got married, and I think she had a very tough time, 'cause the world just wasn't gonna let women do what they wanted.

They were supposed to fit into the mold at that time.

(somber music) My mother passed away unexpectedly.

It's hard when they go when you don't have a chance to say goodbye, but in another way we're communicating all the time.

Both my parents and I, I feel like they're, I can converse with them in my head, as odd as that sounds.

It's a feeling, you know, that she's around, and present.

I painted my mother and I in Venice, and it's 1969, and I'm 10 years old.

I painted it very quickly, and it was cathartic.

Very, and I just sobbed when I was done.

(choking up) It makes me wanna cry.

(chuckling) Really out of joy, 'cause she was there with me when I painted her, and she's just beautiful.

I mean, she was a beautiful woman.

(somber music) I do work out things that bother me in my paintings, and it can be very unconscious.

You know, addressing fears is a big part of our making, I think, even if it's not even clear.

(somber music) And it, I find it very necessary for my personal equilibrium to keep doing that.

What we love about Paula's work is that it is at once familiar and mysterious at the same time.

It's not intimidating, it's not terrifying, but it's still unsettling.

It is like our world right now.

We've gone from what we know, and what we assume is real, and then there's this undercurrent that is starting to pop up, and I think that's in part why these paintings can be so engaging with people.

You wanna find the answer, and the answer is never given.

(upbeat music) I took this with my phone of my in-laws, Greta and Danny, and, yeah, I thought that needs to be a painting.

It's very rare you get a photograph of people at ease in their home, and I don't do a lot of older people.

I just kind of started doing it.

He has his walker here, which I think is an interesting thing.

And then as, you know, I'm getting older, I'm like, well what does getting older look like?

So I think that's partially why I'm interested in this, too.

It, you know, whoever I paint, especially if it's a person, human, it's always me, anyway.

(scratching) You know, they're all self-portraits, really.

(brush scratching) Yeah, but they've got these nice, sweet, smiles, like they're about to fall asleep and have a really nice dream.

(scratching) I don't know if there will be any like, you know, surreal elements coming in.

There could, very easily.

(laughing) Yeah, it's pretty ready to get some color.

(playful music)