Artworks by Patricia Ariel

Patricia Ariel is a contemporary Brazilian-American multidisciplinary artist. Although part self-taught, she had a formal education in visual arts that included academic drawing training and graphic and fashion design. Besides drawing and painting, Patricia has expressed herself since an early age through different artistic languages like drama, dance, and music. Her decision to become a full-time visual artist came only after leaving her homeland. Since then she has been collected and exhibited throughout the United States and internationally. Patricia’s art is strongly influenced by her spirituality and insights into the connections of human beings with nature and the sacred and the spiritual/psychic dimension. In her paintings of haunting and mysterious figures, she evokes her own experiences with loneliness, isolation, and inadequacy, as well as escapism and the search for transcendence from the material reality. Fascinated with the concept of transmutation and the beauty of imperfection, in her latest works she rejects the idea of order and purity to explore the frailty of being human, but also its capability of regeneration and reconstruction. She deliberately maculates her work with tears, cuts, and scrapes of paint, sanding them down to create holes and crevices, creating more tactile spots with materials like gesso, cold wax, and paper. The textures and flaws that emerge from that process can be reworked or enhanced, creating new avenues of dialogue with the work.