Patty Wickman


Coming to age as a female painter in the 80's, interested in the figure, narrative, decoration, and the transcendent, offered few contemporary role models to identify with. Early on I learned to engage broadly with the history of art in general, and painting specifically, drawing from a variety of sources including early medieval through 17th century representations of martyrs and saints, 19th century Shaker gift drawings, Victorian hair wreaths, and durational performance art, to name a few significant influences. In a desire to understand the role of color in my paintings I worked initially with a reductive black and white palette, introducing color gradually and only as necessary to guide narrative and underscore psychological elements within the work. In the early to mid 90's I began exploring a saturated, full-spectrum color palette, the result of a series of color experimentations that grew out of a range of bodily gestures I had staged and photographed in preparation for the painting Within (Without )​, 1993.



"Within (Without) Afterstudies", Oil on Linen, variable dimensions, 1992-1995



Repetition began to play a significant role in the formal and conceptual structure of my work in the late 80's/early 90's. In particular, I was interested in the history of repetition in the visual arts, especially in its roots in the traditionally feminine disciplines of decorative arts and crafts (Promise of Eternal Summer 1987-88). I was also concerned with the varied implications of, and motivations behind, repetition, as represented in a range of contexts from ritual and acts of worship to the tedium of never-ending tasks to repetitive behavior associated with psychological deviation. My work then, and still does, originate from significant bodily gestures, from a range of situations, sources and experiences encompassing the humble and the exalted, the everyday and the intensely personal, and from found and staged imagery. In my investigation of gesture, issues central to representation, and the problems inherent in representation, play significant roles. Through an initial process of juxtaposing seemingly disparate yet conceptually linked events, gestures, objects and forms, poetic, formal and moral relationships emerge.



"The Promise of Eternal Summer", 84” x 84”, Oil on Canvas, 1988-89



A longstanding interest in pictorial, non-linear narrative, representation, gesture and the body lie at the core of my practice and research as an artist. My paintings of solitary figures establish an intentional dialogue with representations of martyrs and saints, from Giotto, Piero della Francesca, and Zurburan, through to Frida Kahlo, Ana Mendieta, and aspects of durational performance art. Notions of endurance, sacrifice, absorption, theatricality, containment, and transformation are central to their making. The figures that I depict are most often physically and/or psychologically vulnerable, depicted in a moment of transition, negotiating a delicate balance amidst their surroundings. The situations that I present in my paintings are intended to address, implicate and involve the viewer as an active participant through the facture of the paint, the act of interpretation, and the use of scale (the figures in the paintings are typically life-size so the viewer is virtually able to walk into the space of the painting). Time is compressed and non-linear within the work, encompassing past, present and future. I consider this as well in relation to the textual analysis of biblical literature, a book which encompasses radical notions of time and which began informing my paintings in the mid-90's.



In 2009 I began making a painting or drawing a day for 40 days annually. The date that I chose to start each series coincided with the period of Lent - the roughly 40 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter. Unlike my typical painting practice, which involves months of planning and working from photographic sources, most of these paintings are based on observation and each is completed within a 24-hour period. These criteria required a shift in my approach to painting, allowing me to capture transitory moments directly (as opposed to mediating the experience through photography), considering anew what makes a painting "work" and reassessing what constitutes completion. In the end success and failure, confidence and uncertainty, coexist and constitute a body of work as well as a record of a specific period of time.



Drawing has played an increasingly pivotal role in the work I've made over the last three decades. To-scale drawings are prepared for each painting and then transferred to the canvas prior to applying paint. The drawings have increasingly been allowed to remain visible, creating a structural web that unites all elements within the painting. The one-to-one scale drawings, previously destroyed after having been transferred, have recently been retained and exhibited with the paintings (All is Leaf exhibition, 2019).



"Circumscribe Study" from All is Leaf, Mixed Media on Paper, 84” x 104”, 2019



In the spring of 2020 I began participating in a collaborative, interdisciplinary, female-centered research group that brought together visual artists and researchers from various fields in the humanities to explore the theme of enclosure, a metaphor for spirituality that attained global resonance during the Covid-19 pandemic. The Enclosure Group met, and continues to meet, regularly via Zoom to discuss primary and critical readings, ranging from medieval literature (such as The Book of Margery Kempe), to Julia Kristeva's Stabat Mater and the research of members, including Henrike Lähnemann, Seeta Chaganti, Billie Mandle and Clementine Keith-Roach. My interest in enclosure had already surfaced in paintings such as First Bite (2019) and Raised Bed (2020), but deepened during the last three years to extend to a series of paintings I'm currently working on, all of which take place at different locations in the enclosure of the same backyard garden. These staged, contemporary, non-linear narratives bear ties to Mystery Plays, medieval dramatizations that explored spiritual history and that emphasized mobility and community, moving from one part of a town to another as the stories unfolded.


- Patty Wickman, 2023



"First Bite", Oil on Linen, 75” x 69”, 2018-19



"Raised Bed", Oil on Linen, 72” x 63”, 2020