Blue Tangerine Art interviews:
Patter Hellstrom
Q: What is the primary motivation behind your work?
I make these images to convey stability within chaos. Equilibrium is reached in my work as structural lines hold despite insistent disruptions. My motivation is to express my developing understanding of concepts and ways of understanding my life experiences.
Q: How would you describe your creative impulse?
My creative impulse grows from my need to decode the world around me and explore the nuisances of that experience.
Q: What types of media do you use?
I use natural materials such as rock, flowers, gourds and glass in my installations. My panel paintings are informed by my installations. Those works are created with acrylic ink on 100% polypropylene material (Yupo paper). That is a non-absorbent surface that resists buckling and allows pigments to retain their true clarity. The translucent sheet allows for layered effects to occur. My new panel paintings are created by face-mounting the yupo material to 1/4" plexi panels and installed with a recessed wood frame. The polished plexi edge gives the panel painting a finished quality.
Q: Why do you prefer to work with these materials?
In the panel paintings each piece is defined by graphite centerlines, which act as a point of reference within areas color and layers of colored inks. The elements evoke a sense of detachment among a host of competing forces. Centerlines hold despite disruptions of splashed color and textured brushwork, suggesting stability within chaos and a curious interdependence between two forces. I especially like the clarity of the pigments and the movement that I can express on the yupo material.
Q: Please give a basic description of your physical and creative process.
In my large-scale panel paintings expressive brushwork with fluid color merges with a graphite linear infrastructure. I begin with line, finding my center within the picture plane. Then elements are balanced along those centerlines to create a dynamic equilibrium. I refine the images over time with thin washes and modifications to increase or decrease tension.
Internally, I consider events, issues and other disturbances that could attempt to disrupt that balance which I created.
Q: How do you choose your color palette?
My color choices are intitutive and instinctual for the most part. I am attuned to the nuances of hue, chroma and value. In my recent work was influenced by my guest artist visit to India. I was visually stimulated by the experience and as a result my work has grown substantially in size and vigor. The color I experienced throughout the regions of India was both vibrant and engaging.
Additionally, that trip was a spiritual quest of sorts as Bihar is the birthplace of Buddhism, the tenets of which have played a role in my paintings for the last ten years. A sense of that place has filled my current work with a new layer of spiritual understanding. My experience of India continues to unfold. It is truly a place that changes all who visit there.
Q: How do you choose the subject of your art work?
The work encompasses themes of impermanence, compassion, stability, and interdependence.
Those ideas intersect with subject matter as seen in my guest artist visit to India. I experienced a diverse culture there, which embodied those themes. The materials in my installations can also offer subject matter. As was seen in the case of my 2003 FLOWER MANDALA. I created a series of 2D works related to flower forms as a way to understand of the complex forms. The subject matter comes full circle to impermanence, structural stability, and interdependence of form.
Q: How do you feel your work has progressed throughout your career?
Early on my work was more outwardly focused incorporating themes of history, political structure, and an exploration those relationships. My current work (since 2000) grows from a deep interior point into the exterior manifestation through my unique process of drawing, writing, reading, and meditating.
Q: Which artists do you admire?
That list is miles long filled with the artists and cultures that have created art through history. I see myself in that linage of art making. I’ll name only a few that were formative. As a child I had access to the Chicago Institute of Art where I copied paintings and drawings by Picasso, Matisse, Chagall, Van Gogh and Cassett. As a young student I visited both France and Italy exploring the traditions of Western Art. Later I became fascinated with Alice Neel and her ability to “capture the soul” of her sitters. By the time I reached my Art School years the flood gates had opened to include Robert Rauschenberg, Yves Klein, Robert Motherwell, Jasper Johns, Sam Francis, Jackson Pollock, Richard Diebenkorn and Wayne Theibaud, and David Parks to name a few. As I began to create installation work I appreciated Jim Hodges, Ann Hamilton, Louise Bourgeiois, Robert Gober and so on. Truly, I love the diversity of art, artists and cultures as I love the multitude of colors in the spectrum.
Patter Hellstrom spoke to Anne Trott, Gallery Director at Blue Tangerine Art.
November 2008
