About Pat Cresson
A practicing artist, designer, and full-time professor of Art and Design at Monmouth University since 1995, Pat Cresson is not afraid to disassemble the raw materials she surrounds herself with in order to craft works of wondrous discovery and complexity. Often incorporating drawings, ripped up type, painting, design, digital imagery, and torn prints combined with oil and cold wax in her painted panels, Cresson’s work has reflected her interests in nature, landscape, scientific discovery, legend, myth, storytelling, and spirituality. Of course these themes are explored through her matchless abstract visual lens and nothing quite exemplifies the exceptionality of her artistic contributions like the work from her most recent series of paintings exploring the relationships between geometry and nature. In her mixed media cold wax paintings, Cresson uses fascinating techniques to apply her paint with rollers, squeegees, sticks, culinary tools, and brushes. Naturally, this yields unusual yet visually enthralling results. The wood panels are first constructed with collage of original material and then immersed in oil paint and cold wax. The final product is burnished to give the surface an eye-catching glow. As Cresson observes, “The hints of collage peeking through the surface remind us that there is more underneath and inside.”
Website: http://patcresson.com/
Artist Statement
Many of the artist’s pieces combine drawing, ripped up type, painting, design, digital imagery, torn prints combined with oil and cold wax in her painted panels. Those elements are never literal but suggestive of the subconscious and cultural influences. Over the years many of her paintings and prints have reflected interests in nature and landscape, scientific discovery, legend, myth, storytelling, and spirituality.
Recently the artist has concentrated her inquiry into the connection between geometry and Nature. Under the foundation of all that is natural and organic lies a geometric grid. In the mixed media cold wax paintings, the artist uses unique techniques to apply her paint with rollers, squeegees, sticks, culinary tools and brushes to get unusual results. The wood panels are first built up with collage of original material and then covered with oil paint and cold wax. The final product is burnished to give the surface a glow.
There are contrasts of flat and deep space, curvilinear and organic line, solid and transparent mass, minute detail versus magnification, and literal against poetic reality. The hints of collage peeking through the surface remind us that there is more underneath and inside.
