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.

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. 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 dog) 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.

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.

Pat Patterson