1990s: Returns

The 1990s represented returns on several fronts for the artist.  She returned to Kansas and imagery from her prairie years, employing her newly developed mixed-media techniques, but also moving back towards painting in its own right.  By 1991, Pat had returned to painting.  In doing so, she continued to pursue her Maine explorations, having become entranced by the shifting patterns on the surface of the sea in Penobscot Bay.  The visual correlations between the two -- shifting seas of prairie grass and shimmering waters of liquid ocean – provided rich material for the artist and, in effect, cross-fertilized her already fecund vision.

While the early 1990s represented a return to painting, Pat continued to exhibit her previous work, much of that photography.  She was included in the “Women in Photography International,” originating in Pacific Grove, CA and traveling around the world, 1989-1990.   She had solo shows at the University of Southern Maine and the Caldbeck Gallery in Rockland in 1990.  Her show at the Caldbeck was reviewed by Philip Isaacson in the Maine Sunday Telegram, September 9, 1990, where he mentioned, among other things, that “Dxxxx-Dxxxx is a brilliant colorist and an elegant draftsman.  In her work, color does more than build form; it has a life of its own.”

Along with shows in Wisconsin, Virginia, and Missouri, she was included in “Maine Photographers” at the Portland School of Art (now Maine College or Art) in 1991.  The year 1992 found her back in Kansas City for a solo show that combined imagery from both the vanishing prairie and coastal Maine, and was reviewed in The New Art Examiner:            

The artist’s subject matter remains, as it always has been, a dedication to the prairie, the inland sea.  To this Dxxxxx brings parallel imagery from her other sea, off the coast of Maine, addressing the spirituality, the archetypal correspondences, in the vast undulations of ocean and prairie.  Her goal, however, is inevitably abstraction.  And it is as abstraction, and in satisfying infinite renderings of volume, color and movement that this work has impact.

                                                --Roanne Riva, New Art Examiner, January 1992    

The year 1992 was a big one for Pat for another reason as well.  As acknowledgement for her work on the prairie project, through her alma mater Washington University she was awarded a residency at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, an artist colony where artists from all over the world live and work together for several weeks.   Pat embarked on a series of daily pen-and-ink drawings combined with journal entries.  This was a project she envisioned as being created for one of her grandchildren who, as a young child, was contemplating becoming an artist when he grows up.  It exists currently as an unpublished book, and was shown subsequently at Maine Coast Artists (now Center for Maine Contemporary Art) in Rockport.  It was titled “Paris Days; Letters: A Letter to a Young Grandson,” and included architectural renderings, cityscapes, people on the street and so forth, accompanied by ruminations by the artist on what it means to be an artist, personally and as part of a social fabric.  The drawings and text are all tenderly and sensitively rendered and retain graphic interest as well. 

In 1993, Pat returned to Maine, this time to care for her aged and ailing mother.  Maintaining her studio in Camden, she began a new series of paintings and drawings entitled “the Memory of Trees.”  Tree forms have remained a topic of compelling interest to Pat since that time.  In 1995, Pat’s art was again recognized by Maine Coast Artists, when her work was included in another show there entitled “Maine Artists Away.”

To view images from this period, please click here.

To read about other periods, please click on the following links:

Introduction  Early Years  1970's  1980's  1990's  2000's