Patricia Patterson
ABOUT PATRICIA
I grew up in College Park where I attended Woodward Academy and completed a foundation year at Atlanta College of Art where I was a photography major. Then I spent the rest of my undergraduate education at Georgia State University where I changed my major from photography to psychology to education and then ended with an BFA in printmaking. My interest in watercolors came from work I was doing at GSU where I was water coloring over screen printed pictures of my family. I taught various art classes at Woodward Academy and Marist: Reach for Excellence Scholarship Program while preparing and applying for graduate school. I did my first set of watercolor portraits on wood panel for my Graduate school portfolio. I moved to San Fransisco in 2007 to attend the San Francisco Art Institute and received my MFA in painting and printmaking in 2009. While I was in San Francisco I received the Murphy Cadogen Fellowship for Painting, and exhibited at the Di Rosa MFA biennial. I returned to Atlanta in 2010 and was awarded the Forward Arts Foundation: Emerging Artist Award for 2011-2012.
ARTIST STATEMENT
My large-scale watercolor paintings investigate how we construct memories over time. I focus on childhood memories, drawing from my archive of actual family photographs taken between 1940 and 1980. These images document the family I know personally as well as those I know only from found photographs. They serve as the foundation for me to explore the nostalgia surrounding a formal family portrait or an intimate moment caught on film. When I create these paintings, I allow the watercolors to congeal and pool on synthetic paper. I vary the degree of detail with which I represent the figures central to my work, and often distort features that allude to the subject’s psychological state. My subjects slip into a background fog of geometric patterns and mundane objects. I carefully construct these backdrops referencing varied textiles, furniture, and other décor from near-distant bygone eras. By using these archival materials to explore and reinvent a family, or family moment, I create work that physically manifests the ways we mentally reconstruct our pasts.
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