Cathy Patterson
Cathy Patterson
I completed my BFA in painting at UNL in 1980. What a wonderful time. I was fortunate to study extensively with Richard Trickey, Gail Butt, and James Eisentraeger, three outstanding painters on the faculty then. Each influenced me profoundly. Of the three, it was Trickey who taught me how to think about painting, while Butt and Eisentraeger excelled at teaching how to use paint. In 2002 after working in a separte field, I came back to art, eventually full time.
I paint, using watercolors, oil on canvas and pastels. I prefer abstraction or nonobjective art, loosely drawn from the built and the natural world. I love the accident and the surprise of working wet into wet. I love the materials and the endless possibilities of combining color, form, space, and line. No doubt this will continue to be my preferred style of working. This pandemic period, though, I turned to trees for a few of the works I completed recently. The impulse developed as I spent endless time staring out the window at the trees I could see from the chair where I often sit. I often have various versions of Norse mythologies nearby, and I found myself thinking of Yggdrasil, the World Ash, the tree that holds the world together. I wondered what our world would be like now, if we had held to the worship of trees. My impulse to work on trees was strengthened by the wonderful novel by Richard Powers, The Overstory. Recommended to all! My work has been exhibited in Lincoln at Gallery 9 and The Lux, as well as the Haydon Art Center (now closed) and various shows in other venues. I also showed my work at The Chait Art Gallery in Iowa City until they closed.