Artist Statement
My art symbolizes experiences of nature, psychology, and consciousness, the inner realities that underlie the outer, the realities that are expressed through the arts and mythology, as well as in spirituality, dreams, and visions.
In a minimalist style of strong abstraction, in pastel, oil, or watercolor, I create paintings that bring what I discover of the inner worlds into the outer. Often developing as series, the paintings express a range of states of being, emotion, and vision related to individual story and communal myth. These themes also inspire independent yet complementary works in prose, poetry, weaving, and fiber arts mobiles. The symbols and mythological images arise in my consciousness in response to intensely felt experience in active and reflective life.
My intent in exhibiting my art is to contribute to peace. My images present a powerful female energy-of-being, a life-affirming male energy-of-being, and complementarity between the two symbolizing the oneness of nature and consciousness: This oneness in the apparent dualities of man/woman, light/dark, and self/other is a unity that means conflict can be resolved through engagement and dialouge - there is no need for war.
Martha Frances Lake Patton
SERIES STATEMENT
Intuitions from Geometry
Pastel painting images conceived c 1988 M.F.L. Patton
The paintings in the pastel series Intuitions from Geometry are mathematical expressions of psychological states of mind /being. They image the unity of math /science and spirit, the unity of the rational and the intuitive.
The “light-energy-forms” that create the images originated in a childbirth experience in 1963. Since then they have appeared in dream consciousness in two series of paintings, Dreams and Visions and Intuitions from Geometry. Both series arose after I had read “The Tao of Physics” by Fritjof Capra, who compared writings from Eastern mysticism with writings from quantum physics:
“The world thus appears as a complicated tissue of events, in which connections of different kinds alternate or overlap or combine and thereby determine the texture of the whole.” W. Heisenberg, quantum physicist, p. 189, “The Tao of Physics” c 1983.
“Things derive their being and nature by mutual dependence and are nothing in themselves.” Ngarjuna, Buddhist mystic, p. 138, “The Tao of Physics” c 1983.
Viewing the four paintings of Intuitions from Geometry and following my own intuition, I consulted “Webster’s New World dictionary” c 1980, to read:
"geometry: the branch of mathematics that deals with points, lines, surfaces, and solids, and examines their properties, measurements, and mutual relations in space." (my underlines)
In the Intuitions from Geometry series a violet line progresses through a transforming sequence of images, expressing being as a mutuality of connection that transforms itself through space and time.
M.F.L.Patton c 1994
Intuitions from Geometry pastel paintings 16” x 20” by M.F.L.Patton :
The entire series was first conceived and painted in 1988. All the works except “Equation # 3” were destroyed by a spill of water. The series was painted a second time.