Dance of Verdant Whispers, Selene Paschoal, 2025, fabric, 14 x 30 in. / 35.56 x 76.2 cm.

Fighting the Mind: Textile Abstractions by Selene Paschoal

September 13, 2025 Gavin Coates

Featured image: Dance of Verdant Whispers, Selene Paschoal, 2025, fabric, 14 x 30 in. / 35.56 x 76.2 cm.

Selene Paschoal’s textile art transforms fabric into a language of movement, emotion, and layered meaning.

Selene Paschoal creates bold textile abstractions that explore energy, thought, and transformation through layered fabrics and vibrant color fields.

Working with bold colors and intricate patterns, Paschoal constructs dynamic compositions that balance tension and flow, inviting viewers into landscapes of both inner and outer worlds. Her 2024 series demonstrates her ability to capture the immaterial, thoughts, emotions, and elemental rhythms, through the tactile medium of cloth.

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Fighting the Mind, Selene Paschoal, 2024, fabric, 20 x 24 in. / 50.8 x 60.96 cm.

In Fighting the Mind, sharp contrasts of blue, gold, and green collide and overlap, creating a sense of mental turbulence. The jagged rhythm of the composition conveys the restless churn of thought, while moments of softness in the fabric’s curves suggest clarity breaking through. The work becomes a meditation on the struggle for inner stillness amid the chaos of cognition.

Unraveling, Selene Paschoal, 2024, fabric, 40 x 30 in. / 101.6 x 76.2 cm.

Unraveling radiates with centrifugal energy, pulling the eye toward its spiraling core. Red, pink, and yellow fabrics interlace in sweeping arcs, suggesting a state of release, where control gives way to motion and freedom. The work captures the paradox of letting go: destabilization paired with liberation. It is a vibrant evocation of transformation, as if the fabric itself is dissolving into light.

Beneath the Murmur of Distant Shores, Selene Paschoal, 2024, textile, 30 x 30 in. / 76.2 x 76.2 cm.

In Beneath the Murmur of Distant Shores, warm waves of red, orange, and gold ripple across the surface like geological strata or ocean currents. The piece suggests echoes carried across time and place, a quiet dialogue between the earth and its unseen energies. Its layered textures invite slow contemplation, as though listening for voices beneath the fabric’s surface.

Paschoal’s textile works capture the essence of inner landscapes, weaving together intensity and subtlety, chaos and stillness. Each piece operates as both visual energy and tactile meditation, a reminder of fabric’s capacity to hold and release emotion. Collectively, these works articulate a language of resilience, unraveling, and renewal.

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