Paula Narbutovskih is an American artist specializing in vibrant desert landscapes of the American Southwest using a variety of media including oils, pastels and watercolors. Born of a Siberian-American Scientist who relocated to Pennsylvania and a mother whose profession was library science, Narbutovskih’s heritage and childhood have marked her with a world view and an attention to nature seldom found in the technological societies of the Western World.

Paula went to New York in 1972 to attend the Art Students’ League for three years studying with Robert Hale who helped her figure drawing and anatomy every day, five days a week for three years. In 1979, Paula came to New Mexico to visit friends. The pristine quality of the air and the vast, wide-open spaces made her decide that it was time her time to leave the big city and move to New Mexico.

Looking at Narbutovskih’s paintings, you are immediately reminded of how things are connected in nature. You see the splendor and excitement of nature; the intensity of emotions that being in nature elicits. You will probably try to categorize her, which is difficult, since, although she is a representational painter in a sense, she infuses her work with a life force that goes beyond mere representation. Her paintings tend to evoke feelings in you that you only thought you would experience out in the fields, or canyons, or mesa tops. Although representational, her work seems to lean towards the dreamlike scenes that one would expect in surrealism.

Over the years, Narbutovski’s work has been a part of museum exhibitions, and has a large collector base worldwide. Paula now lives in Abiqui, NM and has her own studio where she paints. Her work is exclusively represented at San Francisco Street Gallery in Santa Fe.