A painting of wildlife, like a photograph, is a “freeze-frame” – a split second preserved in time by the camera or artist’s brush strokes. So the idea of movement is drawn from inference – when we look at a picture of snow geese in flight, we know those birds are flying because in real life birds aren’t just stuck up in the sky with their wings in formation.
How, then, does one recreate movement? How does an artist portray movement and thus capture the essence of the moment; the whole story, if you will?
<img src=http://sonewmex.com/images/patriciaamlin.jpg vspace=2 hspace=2 border=2 align=right>Patricia Amlin has developed a style that seems to tell more than that split-second. Her works depict movement – projecting energy and vitality and a great sense of the wonderfulness of life.
No wonder her pieces stand out in any show as they did at the recent Festival of the Cranes Wildlife Art Show at the Bosque del Apache.
And it’s a testament to her success when, after writing that paragraph, I read her artist’s statement:
“My painting is inspired by a dream or experience,” Patricia writes. “Last fall I dreamt about incredible dawn energy filled with migrating birds flying north to Siberia. A river was meandering south. The Sun, brilliant in its first rays was inundating the world with fire from the east and reflecting back from a great thunderhead in the west.
“I went to my studio and painted for three months while combing used bookstores and bird sanctuaries for information and inspiration. A series of paintings was born. It involves ecology, cycles and birds but also the moment in time with all is motivated to change; change breeding strategy, change place from corn field to all night stands in cold water and ultimately an incomprehensibly long migration from Bosque del Apache to Idaho or from India to Siberia. The Birds wait for the right light to begin. I wait to put that light and intention in my painting.
“I’m not interested in reproducing a subject bird precisely. My delight is in co-creating a single moment in a cyclic sphere where all energy is in motion."
“I spend hours observing the subjects of my paintings. This year I spent many dawns at Bosque del Apache, NM…next year I hope to visit the wildlife refuge in India where the cranes fatten up to fly to Siberia and before that Hokkaido, Japan, to winter with the most exquisite of dancing cranes."
Patricia received her BFA and went to Germany with a Fulbright Fellowship in Painting, where she says, she “completed my real education in music, theater, world culture and first hand wonderment in the museums of Europe.” She returned to Syracuse University to teach and study and then took over as chair of the Art Department at Rust College in Holly Springs, Mississippi, “where I painted in a hallway in the evening when I wasn’t involved in voter registration and teaching adult literacy.”
Those experiences led her to an MFA degree in Cinema from San Francisco State University in 1973 and a career in drawing “esoteric animated films” and teaching cinema at SFSU. Her films have won awards of excellence and been shown in film festivals internationally.
Oh, and along the way, she says off handedly, “I was a single mom raising four kids.”
Now, Patricia has returned to her first love of painting. And she recalls with pleasure an experience from her pre-grad days: “We were out at lake’s edge one night awaiting the northern lights at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture when Sidney Simon, a painter from New York whispered: “You know, you’re going to have to forget everything we’re teaching you before you can use it.”
“I feel that I am finally coming to that point of forgetting,” she says.
Of her “Sand Hill Cranes Return” a 40-60 oil on canvas, she says, “at sundown the Sandhill Cranes at Bosque del Apache begin an incredible warbling crackling wave of song in the cornfields where they have spent the day. 17,000 Cranes fill the sky and fly to the wetlands of the Bosque.
Patricia is represented by InArt Gallery, 219 Delgado St., off Canyon Road in Santa Fe. You can see more of her works on her website at: www.Patriciaamlin.com (http://www.patriciaamlin.com/) or call her for more information, 505-699-1266.
By Gwen Roath - a.k.a. pengwen
© 2006 SONewMex.com - Permission To Reprint Granted
A painting of wildlife, like a photograph, is a “freeze-frame” – a split second preserved in time by the camera or artist’s brush strokes. So the idea of movement is drawn from inference – when we look at a picture of snow geese in flight, we know those birds are flying because in real life birds aren’t just stuck up in the sky with their wings in formation.
How, then, does one recreate movement? How does an artist portray movement and thus capture the essence of the moment; the whole story, if you will?
<img src=http://sonewmex.com/images/patriciaamlin.jpg vspace=2 hspace=2 border=2 align=right>Patricia Amlin has developed a style that seems to tell more than that split-second. Her works depict movement – projecting energy and vitality and a great sense of the wonderfulness of life.
No wonder her pieces stand out in any show as they did at the recent Festival of the Cranes Wildlife Art Show at the Bosque del Apache.
And it’s a testament to her success when, after writing that paragraph, I read her artist’s statement:
“My painting is inspired by a dream or experience,” Patricia writes. “Last fall I dreamt about incredible dawn energy filled with migrating birds flying north to Siberia. A river was meandering south. The Sun, brilliant in its first rays was inundating the world with fire from the east and reflecting back from a great thunderhead in the west.
“I went to my studio and painted for three months while combing used bookstores and bird sanctuaries for information and inspiration. A series of paintings was born. It involves ecology, cycles and birds but also the moment in time with all is motivated to change; change breeding strategy, change place from corn field to all night stands in cold water and ultimately an incomprehensibly long migration from Bosque del Apache to Idaho or from India to Siberia. The Birds wait for the right light to begin. I wait to put that light and intention in my painting.
“I’m not interested in reproducing a subject bird precisely. My delight is in co-creating a single moment in a cyclic sphere where all energy is in motion."
“I spend hours observing the subjects of my paintings. This year I spent many dawns at Bosque del Apache, NM…next year I hope to visit the wildlife refuge in India where the cranes fatten up to fly to Siberia and before that Hokkaido, Japan, to winter with the most exquisite of dancing cranes."
Patricia received her BFA and went to Germany with a Fulbright Fellowship in Painting, where she says, she “completed my real education in music, theater, world culture and first hand wonderment in the museums of Europe.” She returned to Syracuse University to teach and study and then took over as chair of the Art Department at Rust College in Holly Springs, Mississippi, “where I painted in a hallway in the evening when I wasn’t involved in voter registration and teaching adult literacy.”
Those experiences led her to an MFA degree in Cinema from San Francisco State University in 1973 and a career in drawing “esoteric animated films” and teaching cinema at SFSU. Her films have won awards of excellence and been shown in film festivals internationally.
Oh, and along the way, she says off handedly, “I was a single mom raising four kids.”
Now, Patricia has returned to her first love of painting. And she recalls with pleasure an experience from her pre-grad days: “We were out at lake’s edge one night awaiting the northern lights at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture when Sidney Simon, a painter from New York whispered: “You know, you’re going to have to forget everything we’re teaching you before you can use it.”
“I feel that I am finally coming to that point of forgetting,” she says.
Of her “Sand Hill Cranes Return” a 40-60 oil on canvas, she says, “at sundown the Sandhill Cranes at Bosque del Apache begin an incredible warbling crackling wave of song in the cornfields where they have spent the day. 17,000 Cranes fill the sky and fly to the wetlands of the Bosque.
Patricia is represented by InArt Gallery, 219 Delgado St., off Canyon Road in Santa Fe. You can see more of her works on her website at: www.Patriciaamlin.com (http://www.patriciaamlin.com/) or call her for more information, 505-699-1266.