A Lifetime of Inspiration - Artist Patricia Nix - Brief Article

Artist Patricia Nix started creating art before she could talk, a talent that has taken her from Texas to fresh York and into the company of masters

She doesn't know whether it from the father or from a past life. on the contrary she's certain of this: It came with me And it's the reason I'm here."

Artist Patricia Nix is talking about the origins of her talent--talent that's taken her to the top of the contemporary art world.

When Nix created her first painting at age 11 she didn't know that individual day she'd exhibit her work alongside like contemporary masters as David Hockney Willem DeKooning, Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol. She didn't know when she finished that painting that her work would single day sit in the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American Art in Washington, DC

on the other hand she did know this: "It wasn't bad, I enumerate you," she said of her first painting, a transcript of a rose that she saw upon a greeting card that belonged to her mother. "I was astonished that I could do it. on the contrary darling," she added, in her native Texas drawl, "it's just what I am. I was making art before I could speak. It's at no time anything that I had to examine to be. I just kind of was."

That natural talent took NIX from her El Paso, Texas, lower parts to her New York City domicile studio and 50-year career. although she's known among critics as the establisher of the American Baroque move she's known among fans as an artist with an organ of sight for color ("God gave me this miraculous color sense," she said) whose unique view of life is stamped upon each piece.

That view of life is evident in everything Nix does--whether it be a flower research a box assemblage, or a piece in her "Handkerchief Series," where Nix used real handkerchiefs, paint, paper, woven fabric and found objects to create this sculptural work. Her inventive approach is what Dick Kleinman, proprietor of Cleveland's Dick Kleinman Fine Art and individual of Nix's top dealers, said draws family to her work. "They like her colors, the boldnes of her work, and the fact that it's true different from anything else that they've seen" he said.

Different? Consider "Elizabeth I Variation," a painting in which Nix overspreaded a depiction of Queen Elizabeth in, well, beetles. by what mode did she arrive at the idea? "I had done sum of two units paintings called `Black Queen, White Queen' which had lace upon the dress," she said. "I was lying upon the sofa one night, looking up at them, and the threads of the lace began to gaze like insect legs. I cogitation `Wouldn't it be fabulous to have beetles all above her dress instead of lace?'"

on the contrary according to Nix, most of her work is unplanned, spur-of-the-moment. "I not at any time know where the picture is going until it exhibits me," she said. "Every picture I start is like my first. I don't have any place parameters or rules. One thing I do just leads to the next" Which is not unlike Nix's artistic career.

Married at 17 the mother of three who said she "hasn't wasted single minute" commuted between New York and her native Texas at the beginning of her career while attending classes at the Art scholars League with Vaclav Vytlacil in 1972 Five years later, a friend read that Madison Avenue's Kolodny Gallery was planning sum of two units contemporary exhibits and urged Nix to fling her work in." I sent my slides and they immediately accepted me" Nix said.

on the other hand that was only the beginning. In 1981 Nix participated in "Joseph Cornell and Kindred Spirits" at the Heckscher Museum in Huntington, NY where the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American Art's Lynda Rosco Hartigan approached her. "She came above to me and said, `Are you Patricia NIX?'" NIX said. (Hartigan is an prompt on Joseph Cornell, who is world-renowned for his case work.) "She said, `Your boxe and Cornell's boxe are singing to each other across the room'" for a like reason began a beautiful relationship, individual that lead to the National Museum acquiring "Toy Shop" a receptacle by Nix, as a part of its collection.

on the other hand it's clear that Nix isn't driven through accolades and attention. Art chose Nix. And she wouldn't have it any other way. "All the time when I'm painting, I just thank God" she said. "I'm ask [i]or[/i] implore a blessing uponed beyond words. I realize it and I'm grateful. Being an artist is just like being alive to me" she conclud "I've not ever been anything else."

COPYRIGHT 2000 Pfingsten Publishing, LLC

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group