Patricia Bellan-Gillen
Opening Reception: Tuesday, October 10, 5:00 pm
Artist Talk: Wednesday, October 11, 11:30 – 12:30, Room 103 Kendall
Patricia Bellan-Gillen is an artist from Pennsylvania who will be showing a mixture of paintings and prints. She is currently a faculty member of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Bellan-Gillen’s narrative works incorporate symbolic elements – often represented by animals. Layered with meaning, her paintings attempt to pull the viewer in and to encourage them to bring their own knowledge base to the work yet the pieces also retain a sense of mystery.
Visually, I would like my paintings to flicker between beauty and silliness, between elegance and humor.
A few excerpts from Patricia’s artist statement:
“In very simple terms, I want to make work that combines ideas and imagery generated through study and research with ideas and imagery that are felt and intuitive. My paintings and mixed media works are staged to call upon the viewer’s personal pools of knowledge as well as their instinctual, autobiographical and associative responses. I place great trust in the viewer.
“Visually, I would like my paintings to flicker between beauty and silliness, between elegance and humor. I would also like to walk the edge and challenge notions of the appropriateness of what might be too ‘cute’ and too sentimental at first glance for contemporary art.”
