Charlie Schultz interviews painter Celia Gerard about her work on the occasion of her exhibition Lost at Sea at Sears Peyton Gallery, New York (through February 8, 2014). 

Gerard remarks that this series of works on paper "came out of sculpture … I started working in low relief, and playing with very small increments of depth that of course become huge increments in space. So working into space, into depth, has always been an interest and a priority, and sort of by accident it lead me to this two-dimensional work… I think of [the forms] as elemental. Everything in nature is based on these basic shapes. Cezanne made that observation and it influenced a lot of modernism, cubism certainly. For me, the exchange of depth and flatness is also interesting. When do these shapes become three-dimensional? When do they flatten out again? I’m interested in moving them around in that way. There is also a sense of anonymity to these kinds of shapes. It makes them universal, easily recognizable, familiar."