Patricia Fabricant (b. 1964, New York, New York)

Patricia Fabricant is a painter curator, and award-winning book designer, born in New York City. She received her BA from Wesleyan University and studied painting in Florence Italy. Her abstract and figurative paintings have been exhibited widely at such galleries as M David & Co, Front Room, SFA Projects, Equity Gallery, Morgan Lehman, the Painting Center, and 490 Atlantic. Her curatorial practice includes three editions of the benefit group show, Among Friends, Studio Mates at Front Room Gallery, and With the Grain, at Equity Gallery. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Artist Statement:

I have a deep and abiding interest in process-driven work, from mandalas and yantras to Aboriginal song-line paintings, Islamic tiles, and the Pattern and Decoration movement. The P&D movement interests me in particular since it was a female-driven movement reclaiming the materials and techniques of traditional “women’s work” at a time when the art world was dominated by the machismo of minimalism. I also draw inspiration from spiritualists such as Emma Kunz, Hilma af Klint, Agnes Pelton, and early Kandinsky. My process involves losing myself in a meditative state while immersed in making the work, and a subsequent desire to create that experience for the viewer through the repetition of patterned lines, complex layering, and the optical vibrations created by color relationships. The resulting textures in the surface might evoke water, muscles, cascading hair, fabric, a tornado, a crumpled paper bag. I am also interested in ‘hand’, in the tension between lyrical gesture and tightly controlled patterning. Nothing is sketched out in advance, ruled, or measured, the work is intuitive. I start with an image in my head, or a thought of a color, and build from there towards a maximalist, nearly overwhelming effect. I’m not looking for hard edges or precise symmetry. I’m interested in movement, pattern, density, and perhaps above all the tension of color on color. I embrace visceral, unapologetic, decorative beauty and want to make the viewer’s eyeballs vibrate.