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Patricia Patterson - Artist Statement

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Abstraction was the best preparation for realism, but I couldn’t have known that when

I began many years ago. The brushwork, the layering of painterly effects, and the surfaces

were enough for endless variations and experiments. But over the years, I wanted my work

to transcend effects and to say more about my life and the things that marked it. I admired

artists like Cezanne, Giorgio Morandi, and Chardin. Teaching painting first brought me back

to realism. Drawing has always been important to me, but it started to become clear that

without a strong drawing underneath and a solid composition, the painting would never

sustain my interest.

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I started looking at objects, choosing them for their form and color, composing with

them as if they were sounds or instruments - adding flowers, or my children, who

sometimes played a role in the paintings. Instead of painting scenes, I wanted to organize

the objects and the people (or dogs) in my paintings in a consciously “artificial” way. I started

to feel like painting was closer to poetry; the choices of what to paint and how the objects

resonated with each other held my interest.

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As an art history teacher, I have verbally dissected great works of painting for my

students, exploring symbolism and narrative. When references to the history of art started to

appear in my work, it was because I wanted to include them like old friends, the way you

feel when you are reunited with something beautiful. I called this recent series of paintings

“historical fiction” and was challenged to determine the right arrangement, and the right colors,

to do justice to the great painting that I was incorporating.

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I have had a good response to these works. People seem to enjoy encountering

famous artwork in a new way. I feel like I am sharing much more of myself than when my

work was totally abstract. I like the dialogue that the new paintings are generating, and my

job is to build an interesting composition that keeps people looking.

 

 

Patricia Patterson

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