An eye for emotion
Patrick Meehan, The Journeyman, oil, 18 x 24.
This story was featured in the February 2019 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art February 2019 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.
ANYONE WHO peruses Patrick Meehan’s oeuvre of figurative paintings will notice a subtle motif that pops up from time to time. It isn’t meant to communicate any particular message about humanity, says the Southern California artist. Rather, the whiskey bottles, flasks, martinis, and champagne glasses that occasionally appear alongside the people in his portraits are simply fun to paint. And as creative props, their colors, shapes, textures, and patinas also help build supporting moods and narratives around Meehan’s models, whose own expressive features are the real stars of the show.
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- Patrick Meehan, A Moment Alone, oil, 20 x 16.
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- Patrick Meehan, Cat!, oil, 12 x 9.
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- Patrick Meehan, Idle Hands, oil, 24 x 18.
Most of the artist’s models are people he has known, and photographed, for years. “I’m not a fast painter, so posing a model to paint from life is impractical in terms of time,” he explains. Instead, Meehan conducts daylong photo shoots in his studio that generally yield one or two winning reference shots. Once he starts painting, “I just pick up the brush and start drawing with the paint,” he says. “If you let the mechanical side of painting consume you, you wind up with a painting that has no emotion.”
Some have noticed in Meehan’s loose, bravura brushwork the influence of artist Jeffrey R. Watts, whose own work has been compared to Russian-American painter Nicolai Fechin. Meehan himself studied for a time at Watts’ atelier in San Diego. As for his personal style, he notes, “I try to simplify as much as I possibly can, being conscious of shape rather than detail.” The artist keeps his skills fresh with frequent life-drawing sessions, and he also routinely paints en plein air around his home in Escondido, CA. For Meehan—who moved back west with his wife a year and a half ago after spending five years on the East Coast—it’s been a happy homecoming. “I was homesick,” he admits, adding, “The West Coast is a rainbow of colors. That’s really what I missed.”
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- Patrick Meehan, The Medium IV, oil, 20 x 16.
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- Patrick Meehan, Little Nikki, oil, 16 x 12.
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- Patrick Meehan, Semper Fi, oil, 16 x 12.
Returning to his native California has been just one recent high point for the artist. Meehan, a Signature member of Oil Painters of America, snapped up an Award of Excellence at OPA’s national exhibition last year, and he’s a newly minted Signature member of the American Impressionist Society. Yet, amid these successes, Meehan remains humble. “I’m not the best draftsman in the world, but I strive to be as good as I can be,” he says. —Kim Agricola
representation
McBride Gallery, Annapolis, MD.
This story was featured in the February 2019 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art February 2019 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.
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