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All of us have a particular muse or inspiration,
be it a musical refrain, a place or a special person. For Claude Monet it
was a particular view of haystacks or water lilies in Provence; for Picasso
it was his young mistress. In these examples, Mother Nature serves as the
inspiration for the artist who then interprets the subject matter in his own
unique way. Patricia Tobacco Forrester is such an artist.
Patricia Tobacco Forrester paints from life. "No preliminary
drawings, no photographs are ever involved," she writes. "I sit
on the ground using a cardboard box to lift my paper and tilt it slightly
toward me." In other words, like Monet, Forrester is a "plein air"
painter who works directly in nature rather than in the studio.
Yet, while her luxuriant watercolor paintings are a direct response
to nature, they are not slavish imitations of nature. She uses starling contrasts
(tropical blossoms in a wintery scene, for example) and an element of the
revelatory. Traveling to exotic places she sets her easel wherever she finds
her subject - the islands of Hawaii, the Chavon River Valley of Santo Domingo,
the rain forests of Jamaica.
"The subject of my work is always growth: how trees
and plants bulge and stretch and open." Brilliantly colored flowering
forms - Lotus blossoms, Hibiscus, Birds of Paradise - larger than life are
arrayed in their natural habitat against contorted tree forms, verdant undergrowth,
and distinct river valleys. "By bleeding color into color I hope to make
an analogy with how natural forces effect each other."
"The beauty of watercolor is its range from heavy
pigment to subtlety. It can be finely controlled yet also allowed to explode
in swirls and rivulets," Forrester writes. The controlled application
of watercolor to paper is an extremely difficult technique to master under
ideal circumstances and nearly impossible in difficult terrain and unfriendly
climates.
In rendering the brilliant blossoms of her observed world,
nature becomes entwined with Forrester's memories and reflections. The specifics
of the particular topography or region become her muse. Reflecting her poetic
and psychological sensibility, her paintings clearly fit more comfortably
with the visionary landscapes of Charles Burchfield, Vincent van Gogh, and
Georgia O'Keefe than with those of Monet or Pissarro.
-Michael Berger
EDUCATION:
1965 Yale University, MFA
1963 Yale University, BFA
1962 Smith College, BA, Phi Beta Kappa
SOLO EXHIBTIONS SINCE 1990:
1996 Salander-O'Reilly Galleries, New York, NY
1994 Braunstein/Quay Gallery, San Francisco, CA
Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
1993 Addison/Ripley Gallery, Washington, DC
1992 Steven Scott Gallery, Baltimore, MD
Fischbach Gallery, New York, NY
1991 Braunstein/Quay Gallery, San Francisco, CA
Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Kalamazoo, MI
New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts, New Orleans, LA
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITONS:
1996 171 Annual Exhibition of Award Winners, National Academy of Design, New
York, NY
Quick Center for the Arts, Fairfield University, CT
1995 Masters of American Watercolor: A 100 Year Survey.
Southern Alleghenies
Museum of Art, Loretto, PA
1994 American Realism and Figuration Painting, Cline Fine Art Gallery, Santa
Fe, NM
1993 Contemporary Realist Watercolors, Sewall Art Gallery, Rice University,
Houston, TX
1991-92 American Realism and Figurative Art: 1952-91.
Organized by John Arthur and
the Japan Association of Art Museums. Traveled to Miyagi Museum of Art, Sendai,
Japan; Soho Museum of Art, Yokohama, Japan; Tokushima Modern Art Museum, Tokushima,
Japan; The Museum of Modern Art, Shiga, Japan; Kochi Prefectural Museum of Folk
Art, Kochi, Japan.
1991 New Currents in Watercolors, The Noyes Museum, NJ
SELECTED COLLECTIONS:
Achenbach Foundation, San Francisco, CA
Art Institute of Chicago, IL
Federal Reserve Bank of America, Miami Beach, FL
Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN
Kemper Corporation, Chicago, IL
The Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN
Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, NY
Miles College, Oakland, CA
San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, TX
San Francisco Art Commission, San Francisco, CA
Springfield Museum, Berkeley, CA
The British Museum, London, England
The Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY
The Library of Congress, Washington, DC
The White House Executive Office Building, Washington, DC
University Art Museum, Berkeley, CA
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