Patricia Bason — Recent # 1

Bogart or Mickey Rooney?

I've been asking, "What attracts me to a painting?"

Typically, strong colors and dramatic contrasts catch my attention. Emotional impact plays a part. Elegant landscapes calm me down, and clever people scenes leave me smiling.

Another Side

What surprises me is that I don't spend much time with those paintings. Sure, they're uplifting and well painted, but I don't linger.

Another type, however, always pulls me back.

Certain paintings have an understated element where every detail is not explicit. This somehow introduces a sense of mystery, a sense that all is not what it appears to be. You can feel an allure that's silent, hidden, and yet very tangible.

Bogart or Rooney?

It's like the difference between Bogart and Rooney. After watching a Mickey Rooney movie, and I hope this doesn't date me, I leave with a bounce in my step and a smile on my face. With Mickey Rooney, what you see is what you get.

After a Bogart movie, I don't always have a grasp of what really happened. I feel strangely tormented and have the urge to mumble. But I think about the movie for days, and weeks later I jump at the chance to see it again. Bogart stirs my sense of the unspoken, a sense of mystery.

Study In Light

In my recent oil painting series, Studies In Light, I've tried to acknowledge a darker view, a more mysterious side. It's subtle, but when it works, I can hear Bogart mumbling in the next room.
— PB