Artists of Note |Patricia Aaron

Abstracted life

Patricia Aaron, What I Know to be True, mixed media, 48 x 60.

This story was featured in the April 2015 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art April 2015 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story!

For Patricia Aaron, a semester abroad in London changed everything. Aaron earned a business management degree from the University of Maryland while living in Germany, and she also studied glassmaking, but it was the required study-abroad session that reignited the artistic fire inside. “In London I was reintroduced to art and theater. It made this tremendous impact, and I thought, ‘this is the direction for me,’” she says.

Since then Aaron has immersed herself in art, studying painting, printmaking, and glassmaking at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in the early 1980s and then earning a master of fine arts from the University of Denver in the late ’90s. It was during this time that she discovered encaustics, which is her preferred medium for her abstract paintings. “That material has totally enveloped all my work,” she says. “For me there’s a line of communication when I’m painting abstract to express the landscape I have in my head.”

Having grown up outside Youngstown, OH, a once-thriving urban community in the height of the steel era, Aaron is fascinated by the gritty sprawl of urban landscapes. These urban scenes are what inspire her abstracts. “It’s intuitive, it’s inside me,” she says of her subjects. “And each of my paintings tells a story.” —Joe Kovack

Aaron’s work can be seen at her solo exhibition on May 1 at William and Joseph Gallery, Santa Fe, NM. She is also represented by Water Street Gallery, Douglas, MI; Space Gallery, Denver, CO; and www.patriciaaaron.com.

Featured in the April 2015 issue of Southwest Art magazine–click below to purchase:
Southwest Art April 2015 print issue or digital download Or subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss a story!