Patricia Savage
Patricia Savage is an award-winning landscape, wildlife, and botanical artist, and current President of the North Carolina Pastel Society. Several of Patricia’s botanical paintings are featured in Today's Botanical Artists. The Pastel Journals’ 6th Annual Pastel 100 Competition awarded Patricia with Best in Wildlife and Honorable Mention in Wildlife. She served as Artist-in-Residence in Denali National Park and joined Smith College and PBS The 1899 Harriman Expedition Retraced: A Century of Change. Her work has appeared in The Best in Wildlife Art 1 and 2, Focus Magazine (Italy), US Art, Wildlife Art, and Wildlife in North Carolina. She has exhibited at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, the Bell Museum of Natural History, the National Geographic Society, the U. S. Botanic Gardens, and Walt Disney World’s Animal Kingdom. She is a signature member of the Pastel Society of America, the International Society of Scratchboard Artists and the Society of Animal Artists.
Her paintings and news on upcoming shows, classes and workshops can be viewed at http://psavageart.com.
Artist Statement
I love paint. I love the soft dusty, velvety feel of a pastel stick and the buttery feel of oil paint being stroked on linen.
I love color. I love creating colors that glow. Every time I open a pastel set, it feels like Christmas, all those colorful sticks are like tiny little packages under the tree, just itching to be tried out and sampled.
I love being outside. When I look at nature, I’m drawn to place and detail and the abstract shapes and pattern just waiting to be discovered
And then it has to become a painting.
Three artistic concerns interweave in my paintings, sometimes separate, sometimes co-mingling – composition, color relationships and light and shadow. A painting or drawing may take several hours or over a year, depending on the complexity of the piece. The underlying sketch is drawn from direct observation and from photographic studies.
Whether the piece is more representational or more abstract, I revel in the excitement and emotion color creates in me. I want the color and value to pulse with life, a life that is both exciting and peaceful. Life is also complicated so I actively look for complexity in the color interactions.
I hope that my paintings come alive for you, capturing the feel and wonder of life’s beauty.