OPENING RECEPTION: 1ST THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2018, FROM 5 - 8PM
Sullivan Goss American Gallery is excited to announce its second solo exhibition for Patricia Chidlaw . A brand new body of work from this much sought after painter is taking the spotlight on the walls of our forward most exhibition space.
The Moving Picture Show testifies to the artist’s ability to capture scenes of contemporary life that are emotionally moving. Sometimes, her paintings suggest a glimpse from a moving car or a moving train. Sometimes, her work evokes the same feeling of liberated voyeurism we get from moving pictures passing before us in a dark theater. Like an empty drive-in movie screen silently waiting for its next attraction, we look forward to what else she will discover next as she moves around the West.
Patricia Chidlaw is a contemporary American realist painter who tends to frame the less inhabited spaces of urban life and life on the road. She seeks out fading cultural icons like the art deco movie marquee and ticket booth, the vintage neon-sign, the last remaining telephone booth. She gravitates towards places whose twentieth century promise still glimmers from beneath chipped paint, cracked concrete, and in some of these paintings, twenty-first century graffiti. Places like Marfa, Bakersfield, or the tumbleweed once-were towns of Nevada stand witness to our shared and often colorful past. Presented from time to time in cinematic scale, no subtitles are needed for these pictures. In Patricia’s Chidlaw’s moving picture show, the sets are built, but the actors have yet to walk on or have already walked off. We wait for action and feel, in that too still moment, the sweetness of longing and the edge of tranquility.
Patricia came to Santa Barbara to earn her bachelor’s degree in fine art from UCSB. For a time, she was an odd fit for Ray Strong’s OAK Group. Trading in a life of wanderlust, she put down roots in Santa Barbara. She and her husband still venture out by rail or by car, looking for that next moving picture.
