Carrie Patterson

I aim to convey an internal awareness of the body in space by distilling gesture, movement and color into smaller components. First, I convey a particular attitude of expression through the scale, direction and weight of a painted stroke. I experiment with repetitive actions, from slight movements of the wrist to large sweeping movements of the body, creating a vocabulary of gestures that are recorded on the surface of a painting. This record of layered movement creates the rhythmical structure of a composition.

Every mark is a metrical beat. Finally, color completes the painting's structure. I sometimes choose color in opposition to the gesture, creating complex relationships and revealing beauty within areas of discord. I work on many canvases at once, altering the gesture, movement and color in subtle degrees, much as a dancer would practice the same move repeatedly.