The paintings evolve from my interest in observing and investigating the
energies of relationships and interactions, usually between two people, as
well as the energies of personal space.
The poems were not written as comment on any particular painting nor were
the paintings done as illustrations of any poem. Done independently of each
other, the work is nevertheless all related; the poems and paintings each
being a kind of metaphor for the other.
It becomes a diary in that the material is organized as though the journey
from despair to joy could be seen as a straight-forward development, which
in reality, of course, is a simpliļ¬cation. The poems and paintings all date
from the l990’s.
Pat Paxson was born in Philadelphia, raised in the mid-west and later
Philadelphia, is a Swarthmore College graduate, and then lived in London
for over 20 years, until 2008 when she and her husband returned to live in
the U.S.
Pat has been a painter for 15 years, receiving an M.A. in ‘Drawing in
Fine Art Practice’ in 1998 from Wimbledon School of Art in London, and
in 2004 gaining a doctorate in Visual Art (combined practice and theory)
from Goldsmiths College, University of London. Written work for the Ph.D.
is focused on ideas about the interaction of perception and unconscious
processes (exploring a theoretical basis for the idea of intuition), inspired
by the work of Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Anton Ehrenzweig and others.
