How Eva Helene Pade Creates Her Dreamlike Paintings The Cut's Taste Test

By Nadine Zylberberg

When Eva Helene Pade gets to work on a painting, she can never really predict what will come about. Though her work is figurative, she doesn’t use models or references. 'I have a blurry image in my head and I figure it out as I go along,' she tells The Cut. 'I work in these color blobs and then find the characters.' It’s what she imagines sculpting is like. 'You play around with it, you mold it, and you find a face in a splash of paint you made before. Or you find something from the paint underneath — I paint in many very thin layers — that you didn’t know was there.'