PATRICIA WATWOOD
Patricia Watwood has exhibited at galleries and museums worldwide such as Hirschl & Adler, Dacia Gallery and The Forbes Galleries in NYC, Meredith Long in Houston, John Pence in San Francisco, and Galerie L’oeil du Prince, Paris. In 2012-2013, her work was viewed in six cities China in an historic presentation of American painting, Contemporary American Realism, beginning at the Beijing World Art Museum. Watwood’s solo museum exhibit, Patricia Watwood: Myths & Individuals was on view in 2011-2012: St. Louis University Museum of Art, and The Forbes Galleries, NYC. Watwood earned her MFA with Honors from New York Academy of Art, and studied with Jacob Collins as a founding member of the Water Street Atelier. Watwood has been an adjunct professor of drawing at New York Academy of Art, and has given lectures and workshops across the country, and is a featured art instructor with Craftsy.com.
"I am a contemporary figurative artist working in the classical tradition of oil painting. I use narrative structures like allegory and myth to explore meaning in our common experience, and create images to evoke spiritual presence and iconic ideation. My work prioritizes aesthetic principles, technical rigor, craft, and balances perception with design. Through the human form, I find a passion and humility before nature, a belief that metaphor and narrative can help us puzzle out the mysteries of our time here on earth, and a belief in the emotional power of the common visual language of representation.
My principle subject is the sacred feminine. In exploring subjects like Venus, Flora, and the grand-manner nude, I am continually digging to unearth Beauty as a tool of power. I seek a presentation of the figure that does not separate the sensual and beautiful from the intelligent and meaningful. In spite of its complicated relationship to feminism, I feel that beauty's place in art has been rejected for too long. Beauty is a great rhetorical tool. It can move people and change minds, and inspire action and devotion. By juxtaposing classical feminine figuration with environmental decay or political thought, I suggest the necessity of cultural and ecological transformation, and assert the enduring primacy of feminine power and aesthetics. Though decades of women artists have rejected beauty in figurative images of women, I find this in itself is a restriction. I am not so much interested in women as a subject as I am in women as a presence. I am not trying to create an object so much as a force."
Website: Patricia Watwood
My principle subject is the sacred feminine. In exploring subjects like Venus, Flora, and the grand-manner nude, I am continually digging to unearth Beauty as a tool of power. I seek a presentation of the figure that does not separate the sensual and beautiful from the intelligent and meaningful. In spite of its complicated relationship to feminism, I feel that beauty's place in art has been rejected for too long. Beauty is a great rhetorical tool. It can move people and change minds, and inspire action and devotion. By juxtaposing classical feminine figuration with environmental decay or political thought, I suggest the necessity of cultural and ecological transformation, and assert the enduring primacy of feminine power and aesthetics. Though decades of women artists have rejected beauty in figurative images of women, I find this in itself is a restriction. I am not so much interested in women as a subject as I am in women as a presence. I am not trying to create an object so much as a force."
Website: Patricia Watwood
Bacchus. Oil and gold leaf on canvas; 96.52 x 91.44 cm (38″ x 36″).
Semele. Oil and gold leaf on canvas; 91.44 x 60.96 cm (36″ x 24″).
Pandora. Oil on canvas; 76.20 x 66.04 cm (30″ x 26″).
