Patricia Aaron - Best in Show!

This is Colorado, an exhibit held each year to showcase the work of Colorado artists, is currently being held at the Madden Museum of Art.  It's a new location for the traditional show, though the rest of the tradition seems to have remained intact.  This is Colorado is a "juried exhibit", meaning that the works are judged by locals and then awarded the art equivalents of gold, silver and bronze.  "Gold", in this case, is actually called "Best in Show", and we are thrilled to announce that the gold medal goes to...Patricia Aaron!

This is Colorado featured Aaron's ink-and-encaustic work Youngstown, circa 1964.  The piece is a large-scale cityscape rendered in a vibrantly colored, abstract combination of beeswax, India ink, graphite and other materials on a birch panel.  The result is a brilliant mish-mash of colors, movement and shapes that simultaneously pull the viewers eye in different directions, which actually recreates the bustling, stimulating feeling of being in the middle of a crowded, industrial urban area.  In looking at the abstract work it is almost possible to make out the blurred outlines of buildings against the grainy, gray sky that framed Aaron's childhood in the industrial city of Youngstown, Ohio.

(Underwater Maze, archival ink on plexiglass)

Aaron's work will next be featured in Translations Gallery's upcoming show New Perspectives.  The show will present the work of artists who approach familiar topics in unexpected and non-traditional ways - in Aaron's case, cityscapes and personal history done in a slightly wild, somewhat unsentimental, abstract yet comprehensible style.  The show opens at Translations on February 16th and runs through April 2nd.