Paula's work and commissions include, sculpture and paintings, public sculptures, drawings, hand-colored etchings and commercial illustration.

She lives just south of Santa Fe, New Mexico, with wide open views. She loves the land, but it is the delight of interaction with other creatures - people and the other animals, that instruct her art.

Since 1985 Zima's illustration work has been featured on many of See's Candies Inc. holiday packaging. Usually sweet holiday scenes of animals, her favorites are the sometimes ever so slightly wicked Halloween images which See's has allowed her to do. Her illustrated boxes are in collections around the world.

Paula's sculpture has been influenced by four main artists, Beni Bufano, Marino Marini, Gustav Vigland and Allan Houser.   The artists that painted during the Italian  Renaissance, and the plein air painters of this century have also greatly effected how she works. Thanks to her parents love of art, she has been studying sculpture, paintings, drawings and prints in museums and books since her early childhood.

Paula's education is in Field Biology, Fine Arts and Graphic Arts. In 1993 she worked as an apprentice to the late sculptor Allan Houser in Santa Fe, New Mexico. After that period, in the early winter, she traveled to Europe, to see the work of the old masters in person.

On her own she spent long and happy hours with her sketchbook in the museums and cathedrals in Florence, Assisi, the small towns of Provence, and Paris. She was actually on a quest, to discover if art was still of value. Does the world actually need more paintings, more sculptures? Why keep making things... aren't there more important activities in the world than creating images for the pleasure of expression?

As she journeyed in France and Italy, she saw sculptures and paintings that have been loved and preserved for centuries. Her eyes began to see everything through the work in her sketchbook. In the Uffizi museum in Firenze she was caught by the marble sculptures of the ancient Romans, and outside, ducking into a little cafe, out of the rain for cup of hot chocolate, she suddenly saw everyone as a sculpture, drawing or painting - vignettes of Life.

This was was her first real sign that she was indeed on the right life track, it is one thing to love and treasure the art of the world, to devote one's life to the making of it is another.

She didn't get her truly final answer until months later, when she was unpacking her belongings after a year of travel in Europe and the USA, and settling into her new place. There was almost a sadness, becoming rooted again after traveling so freely, until she unpacked the boxes containing her art treasures. Suddenly the house became her home, alive with expression, she found herself whistling, and realized  "This, is why I make art!"

If true art is the expression of the human condition, then Paula's way is to express the love, joy and tenderness she finds there.  She rarely focuses on angst, anger, uglyness or sadness, unless, as in her painting "The Burial of the Sardine" (after Goya) it is to find a bit of merriment about it. Her love for the natural world, and intelligent creative ways of living in it are what comes across in her art.

Her spiritual studies have taken her on a similar journey. From the teachings of Mary Baker Eddy, her mother's religion, to studies of religions of the far East, reading Carlos Casteneda, Ernest Holmes, the Bhagavad Gita, Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Sri Ramakrishna. Learning the deep quiet of Vipassana meditation in combination with her renewed studies of Mrs. Eddy's work, she now considers herself a student of The Heart, one who is working towards union with the Divine, in the present moment, to see Reality clearly. That is a wonderful basis from which to come for making delightful art for the world to enjoy.

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Photo: Paula with bronze rabbit at the Houser Foundry by Tom Reno