Biography from Louis Stern Fine Arts:
|  Los Angeles Times, July 2, 2010: "Art Review: Elizabeth Patterson at Louis Stern Fine Arts" by David Pagel.
Photo-Realism enjoyed its 15 minutes of fame in the early 1970s and
then faded into the background. Today, it stands out as one of the few
movements from those heady days that a new generation of artists has
not recycled, rehashed or riffed off of.
At Louis Stern Fine Arts, Elizabeth Patterson’s colored pencil drawings
bring Photo-Realism up to date, transforming its labor-intensive
imagery and keenly observed subjects into startlingly fresh images of
perfectly ordinary moments that are all the more enchanting for being
commonplace.
Each of Patterson’s precisely rendered pictures is the view through a
car’s rain-splattered windshield. Approximately half of the 25 drawings
she made over the last four years feature streets around Los Angeles,
including Wilshire, Ventura and Sunset boulevards. The others leave the
city behind for lonely country roads with little traffic, rolling hills
and lots of trees.
But the real drama plays out in the raindrops. Each is a universe
unto itself, an oddly shaped abstraction or a lens through which
natural and artificial light reflects and refracts. Their number is
daunting, as is Patterson’s devotion to the singularity of each, not to
mention the blurry world that lies beyond the rain-splashed glass.
She mixes solvents into her works on vellum, giving them the delicacy
and fluidity of watercolors while maintaining the crispness of pencil
drawings. It’s a felicitous combination that echoes the double nature
of her images, which let you look at and through a surface — into a
multilayered world where otherwise ordinary details are suffused with
extraordinary beauty.
--David Pagel
|
Biography from Louis Stern Fine Arts:
| Originally from Pennsylvania, Elizabeth Patterson earned a Bachelor of Fine
Arts degree at Minneapolis College of Art and Design and relocated to the Los
Angeles area in 1979. She worked in numerous mediums and styles with a strong
proclivity for graphite and color pencil rendering. Though she won recognition
from a very early age, her success as an emerging artist came to an abrupt
halt in 1984. A severe crash injury resulted in a complete loss of use of her
drawing hand and necessitated two years of intensive medical treatment. Feeling
uncertain that she would ever draw again, Elizabeth put her artistic pursuits
aside and embarked on a completely different career path.
In 1986, Elizabeth traveled
to Hawaii where she explored the magnificence of the undersea world. Little
did she know that the visual impressions of that experience were committed
to memory and would surface many years later to inspire her magnificent color
pencil drawings.
Thirteen years after that trip, when her partner insisted
that she resurrect her art career, she was stunned to discover that her gift
for drawing was unaffected by the distressing injury. The result was a series
of brilliant aquatic drawings that catapulted the artist back into the world
of creativity.
She continues to expand her subject matter, demonstrating an
admirable mastery in graphite and color pencil drawing. Her work has won critical
acclaim and numerous awards including the prestigious honor of signature status
in the Colored Pencil Society of America. | |
| ** If you discover credit omissions or have additional information to add, please let us know at registrar@AskART.com. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|