THE COLLECTOR’S GUIDE: CHRISTINE TAYLOR PATTEN

Artists must see things as they are, not as what they are said to be. We remove obstacles and interruptions, exposing hidden meaning and promise. And as we make something out of nothing we make our own rules, because none apply. I have always had trouble staying within the lines. As I draw, I yearn to see more, to shatter preconceptions. Mystery cannot be found by staying within the lines.

Scientists tell us the observer changes the observed. What am I doing to that which I dare to see? Years ago, I decided to look at the same thing in many different ways for a long, long time, so that someday I might see it. The drawing leads me, tempts me with what I think I see, then shocks me with what is next released---an abstract movement unimagined by this observer. I watch, both hungry and terrified, as the work draws me into it. In Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot writes,

As humans we move, defining the spaces around us, perhaps gathering momentum from beyond our own self and transforming it, taking on the characteristic of what was formerly inaccessible to us. So it is with drawing. With each stroke of the pen, it changes its place in the world and that place is called into question, and is always in relationship to everything else. I find the most powerful movement in the drawings when I stop short of trying to control them. That is where the surprises are, where the drawing is itself and not me.

The micro/macro series is a continuum of over 2000 one-inch crowquill and ink drawings on three-inch paper (the micros) and one seven-by-twenty-four-foot drawing (the macro), a progression of images begun with a single dot in space which evolves through myriad movements, each referential to the preceding drawing. The images reiterate each other, gradually changing from one movement into another, ad infinitum. At each point of change---each drawing---the direction is arbitrary, evolving from among myriad possibilities as if by instinct.

These drawings are time capsules for me---spaces where time is limited and expanded simultaneously, where time meets quietly with space to reveal something new and where, sometimes, it is broken apart. As I draw, I watch the universe appear. Masses of light turn into spheres, which multiply, divide, circle each other, spin, split off into planes and become abstract movement, gradually calming and hovering, meeting another then becoming something else. Lines become masses which obliterate light, vanishing, then reappearing, the whole process beginning again, in another way.

At first glance these drawings seem sequential; indeed, exhibited en masse they are numbered as years, celebrating two millennia. But when the drawings are taken out of context and played with, reordered, they take on new, unexpected relationships and seem familiar again in a different way. I watch relationships within one movement change into another dynamic when placed in counterpoint to a different drawing. These drawings mirror and expand the investigations within my work over the last twenty-five years, longtime explorations of wave motion and relationship which probe similarities and differences in our world. The small drawings contrast with previous drawings of monumental scale only in size; I get lost inside of them and they seem as large as the big ones. It is the same investigation, with new discoveries. Things are the same. And things are different.

Artists share with scientists a compulsion to know, a deep longing for clarity and sense and communication. We look at the same things with different eyes, and fill in different parts of the vacuum, describing the world from each perspective, sometimes from the head, and often from the heart, or the soul.

I must draw, and the act is akin to dance, or song, in sync with the movement of the universe and leaving the tracks of my passage for others to see. The act of drawing becomes as much a part of the universe as the sun or the waves of the ocean, joining in with the familiar and the mysterious, leaving clues.

“Patten's surfaces initially suggest minimalist simplicity . . . they are in fact grounded visual structures, built from thousands of precisely incised hatch marks — artistic obsession made manifest . . . creating sublimely abstract evocations of light . . . the myriad ink strokes seem like a sear mark, the afterburn of a magnifying glass. Patten's adroit handling of the masses of marks achieves vibrant, seamless shifts from black through gray to white and back again. . . suggestive of everywhere and nowhere. With only a chiaroscuro spectrum, she conjures extremes which . . . coexist in impeccable equilibrium.”

“Patten's compositions are akin to Lyonel Feininger's futurist geometry, but her anchoring of intersecting, translucent planes of light . . . serves to enhance the shifts of light tonalities with an even subtler sense of texture, transforming the vaporous hatching to fields of particle fibers — a near obsessive attention to touch and technique that evokes the work of Eva Hesse. And here too, perhaps, is Patten's great strength. The series is stunning for its visual and tactile effects, yet the core of this encounter with intangible space is the discovery of linear time:the viewer's slow, or sudden, awareness of the artist's own hand in the infinite application of discrete strokes that by themselves compose, shape, and animate those effects. With the pedimental scale of Unity, Patten conveys an elemental link between material process and private myth on an epic level: Like the spinning goddess of the ancient Fates, the artist threads a vast tapestry from the skein of fibers that become the fabric of our lives.”

“. . . non-mainstream . . . against the current”

“An exciting show, though very quiet, is Patten's drawings, one of the finest I have seen in the Southwest, and, in kind, the finest I have seen anywhere.”

“Her line is absolute and unerring, so well executed, in crowquill and black ink on paper, that you can imagine the artist's hand moving in concert with some inevitable template in the air, some impeccable model conceived of pure thought. In fact that is what they are.”

“. . . Complex these drawings certainly are, but they are beautiful, too, in their simplicity — nothing unessential is added; nothing essential is left out.”

“It is as if the artist had tuned in to unseen forces, like the waves of gravity, which regulate the nature of things, and, with perfect control, traced them with her pen.”

“This is a marvel. To use ink this well is in itself a feat, but without vision it would be no more than a tour de force; Patten uses intricate, fine lines to make up a larger whole.”

“. . . the drawings, beautiful and rare, make up an unforgettable exhibition.”

“Most satisfying among the works on display are Patten's works on paper. Although the artist calls these drawings, they extend far beyond the most obvious characteristics associated with that medium. They have a monumental quality and a density . . . .”

“. . . in execution these works demonstrate an obsessiveness and compulsiveness akin to the work of Eva Hesse, but they also have an ease and breath that make them contemplative.”

“Patten looks at the world picture in a huge, unbelievably complex drawing of deceptively simple form . . . sizzles across the paper at a wrenchingly subtle angle . . . a shearing off, a listing, a fault line in the collective unconscious . . . a triumph . . .”

“Another good reason not to miss this show is the dozen or so elegant, painstaking drawings by Patten She exhibits richly textured, sensuously modeled images . . . Largely due to scale, these pictures convey an overall sensuality that stems from the forms themselves and not from their subjective implications. Obsessive control of her mediumand sensitive flowing compositions make Patten's show better than the norm.”

“. . . one of the best exhibits here in a long time . . . a special brilliance . . . .”

“The images are abstract and yet imbued with a sense of subject. It is as if the artist was sitting in front of her inner landscape and represented it with accuracy and conviction.”

“. . . a world consisting of writing organic shapes, a kind of spiritual anatomy in which the forms of nature are present, but never quite identifiable.”

“. . . erotic overtones more forceful because they are not explicit.”

“The technique in Patten's drawings is extraordinary. She builds her structures out of short strokes of the pens. . .tones derive from . . . density of little lines piled on top of each other . . . an enormous range of values . . . wonderful richness . . . reminiscent of the complexity of old engravings, but without the feeling of a mechanical system of rendering . . . has the accuracy of a medical illustrator, who regards her subjects without the usual detachment.”

“Patten's huge drawings were so fine as to seem out of place in this show”

“. . . an exceptionally pure ink drawing by Christine Taylor Patten . . . Durer's 'nothing glossed over and nothing overstepped” is true of the inevitability of these drawings, like the record of an unseen wave all at once made visible.”

“. . . drawings by Patten . . . a masterful combination of draftsmanship and expressive design.”