Perceptual Realism

The ideas for my art often occur to me at unexpected times in places where I live: on a high-rise balcony in downtown Chicago, along rural roads in Texas, in the hills and valleys of southern Spain. I want my artworks to express relationships I perceive between light and shadow, shapes and objects, that might otherwise go unnoticed. I call the creative result “perceptual realism”.

My life in art began in Chicago, a place where fine art is everywhere taught, created, and shown. I was taught and exhibited at the Palette and Chisel Academy of Fine Arts, and I participated in master classes and exhibitions of Asian calligraphy and traditional scroll painting. In Austin, Texas, where I live now, I’ve drawn on the resources of the Contemporary Austin Art School at Laguna Gloria and participated in Neoteric Art Austin, a group of artists devoted creating artworks that inspire study and reflection. I have found both inspiration and additional opportunities among the international group of artists and art teachers who live and work in and around the white villages (like the one we live in, San Pablo de Buceite) of Andalusia.

Realism has been for me an important form of expression in various media, including oil, watercolor, pen and ink, collage, and mixed uses of paint, paper, and other materials. My camera is always with me, and when a scene evokes an idea for an artwork, I study it through my camera’s lenses. Compositions and choices of media emerge from sketches I create based on such studies.

I also enjoy creating abstract artworks featuring ideas whose main expression is through uses of color and suggestions of movement. Often, once paint is on the canvas, the process of abstraction takes over, and new ideas emerge.

When I just want to look at art, I especially enjoy the works of Van Gogh and Braque as well as the photography of Anne Leibowitz and Ansel and Robert Adams, perceptual realists all. Thus, art books are close at hand in my studios.

Pat Lynn