In her artist statement, Boston-based painter Cristi Rinklin notes that she is inspired by the visual language of constructed reality that permeates the history of pictorial space. Through that declaration, she seems to have given herself permission — with inspiration from and full respect to those who’ve painted before her — to utilize anything and everything from the past in making her futuristic-looking works.

“This is pretty much true,” she said. “I’m fascinated by the flexibility of painting, and how it can be a window or an object, how it can be self-referential or become something else entirely. Painting, when done well, can present an impossible set of conditions but convince us entirely that these conditions are plausible. The idea that one can inhabit these conditions psychologically is at the core of my work.

“In a contemporary context, pictorial space means not only art historical traditions but now includes screen space — cinema, virtual reality, lens-based imagery, the Internet. All these ways of seeing and imaging space, historical and contemporary, are considered in my work.”

Senior curator Francine Weiss, who was familiar with Rinklin’s work from previous exhibitions at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum and the Fitchburg Art Museum, invited her to show at the Newport Art Museum. “Paramnesiac,” which runs from June 15 through September 2, will be a survey of her work dating from 2006 to the present, with an emphasis on work done between 2006-2010.

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