A Brief History
Pat Pendleton (b. 1952, North Tonawanda, New York) is a multi-disciplinary artist (photography, textiles, collage) working in Angola, NY. Primarily an abstract painter (acrylic paint on paper, canvas, and wood), the discoveries and struggles found in a process of layering materials become a kind of interior landscape of color, shape and mark--evidence of the continuous present through ongoing transformation and changing elements.
Small acts and gestures build upon one another to offer the meaning of human experience. Making paintings through a process of arranging and layering materials is a way to dialogue with my time and place. Objects for contemplation, they are informed by memory, ideas, nature and the senses; discoveries that are a play between action and stillness. The Twentieth Century painter, Georgia O'Keeffe signed her letters "from the faraway nearby." This idea reminds me of the way painting is a measure of the physical and psychic geography between self and other (person or painting) that is constantly shifting.
Pat Pendleton grew up in Tonawanda, New York. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Studio Art from SUNY Collage at Oswego and went on to further pursue ceramics and textile work while residing in San Francisco before relocating to Manhattan at the end of the 1970s and began painting and exhibiting in group shows at Minor Injury Gallery, Middle Collegiate Church, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Emerging Collector Gallery, AIR Gallery, and Public Image Gallery.
During the early 1990s she left New York to attend a graduate program in Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado and received a Master of Arts in Transpersonal Counseling Psychology and Art Therapy. While working as a clinician and group facilitator in health care, she continued with a painting practice and participated in shows at Core New Art Gallery, Hospice of Metro Denver, Naropa University Art Gallery, and Boulder Art Gallery.
Back in Western New York since 2005, she has participated in more than 25 local exhibitions, including numerous local member shows, such as Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Carnegie Art Center, Burchfield Penney Art Center, Artspace Buffalo Gallery, Western New York Book Arts Center, CEPA and Big Orbit.
Other selected exhibitions include:
2024
Live On Five
Buffalo Arts Studio
Collecting Conversations: Open Members Exhibition 2024
Niagara Arts & Cultural Center
Three Degrees of Abstraction: Painting--Mary Begley, Pat Pendleton, Eileen Pleasure
Carnegie Art Center
Known, Imagined, Experienced
The Comma Fine Art Gallery
2023
Wonders, Wild and new (Dec)
Inside, Outside, In Between (Sept)
The Comma Fine Art Gallery
Mid-Winter Draw (March)
Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center
2020
Marks of Repair
Virtual Exhibition (The Exhibit)
20/20 Vision: Women Artists of Western New York
Castellani Art Museum of Niagara University
2018
Harvest: Recent Painting by George Grace, Pat Pendleton, J. Tim Raymond Artspace Buffalo Gallery
2017
The Future of Something: Recent Painting by Pat Pendleton and J. Tim Raymond
Artspace Buffalo Gallery
2016
Nephilim: Malcolm Bonney and Friends
Artspace Buffalo Gallery
Winter Drawing Rally (Feb)
Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center
2014
Year of the Horse: Fendya, Pendleton, Raymond
CG Jung Center Gallery
2012
Curious Evidence: Mixed Media Works by Pat Pendleton, 1982-2012
Artspace Buffalo Gallery
Pat Pendleton's published writing includes reviews of Western New York art exhibitions in the former Artvoice and The Public. Painting as a Path to Wellbeing appeared in Art Therapy, the Journal of the American Art Therapy Association. Several self-published art picture books appear in the Blurb Book Store. Commentary on Carrying On as an artist over time appears in her Cottage Industry Blog.
Woman in the Mirror: The Shape of Becoming--A Memoir in Seven Stories is now available from Bookemon Creative Author Press.