Patty is an Abstract Artist who had been living in the beautiful Fingerlakes Region of Upstate NY and moved to Charlotte in 2019. She started drawing as a child entering those pencil drawing contests in the newspapers in the 1970s! More drawing ensued in High School and then she was off to college and studied American Sign Language, a sort of “visual art”. She pursued a BA in Political Science at the University of Wisconsin after a few years of interpreting to get out of interpreting but that didn’t work! Interpreting was a great “Mom Career” and she stayed in it for 30 years. With three kids in in their teens she got a Masters in teaching Interpreting from Northeastern University that allowed her to teach at Keuka College in upstate NY. In late 1999 she lived in Massachusetts and she decided to take up Art again and played with watercolor and black and white photography. It was a chance to put all that “Sign Language Art” created in the air onto paper and use those visual/spatial skills in a different way.
Exploring Abstract art has been the most relaxing and an exciting creative outlet since her retirement several years ago. She has always been attracted to Architecture and old buildings. Form and composition are what attracts her. Patty decided to paint Abstracts but had no idea how to begin! Only after studying and working with other abstract artists and changing to Acrylic paint did she find her niche. She started to look for compositions in everyday items for inspiration. Now she sees compositions everywhere.
Hello, I love to paint in Acrylic because the layers are so amazing and you can build up some great texture. I think that is the thing that also drew me to Encaustic which is painting with HOT WAX, yes you heard me right! Crazy right. It is an old Egyptian painting technique, even crazier. The wax is HOT, about 185 - 200 f . The colors are great with so many opaques and transparent colors and the texture you can create is incredible. So all this Abstract LOVE is not to say that I dont do the occasional "realism" whatever your idea of that is. I have painted some nice landscapes in an abstracty form or with a bit more detail but I dont paint every leaf on the tree, in fact no individual leaves per se, haha. Check out my work, I do commissions from photos, what you got?
After 30 years of working as a Sign Language Interpreter and a BA in Political Science I went for a MA in teaching interpreting in a college setting to future interpreters!
