Courtesy photo
The Art Base in Basalt will open a new solo exhibition by Denver-based artist Daisy Patton on Friday. It follows a well-received December group show featuring Patton’s work at the Skye Gallery in Aspen.
An open reception will run from 5 to 7 p.m. The exhibition runs through April 5.
Titled “Forgetting is so long,” the show builds on Patton’s signature altered photograph style. It is predominantly made of anonymous family photographs painted over with oils in vibrant colors and mixed patterns—giving a slightly surreal feel to the vintage black and white images.
All of the works are untitled with a descriptor following—giving the viewer a glimpse into the image’s original identity, as in “Untitled (To Nancy with Lots of Love from Olive xx 1943 Sydney H. Wood, Darlington).”
“There is something about the original photograph that has an energy or aura of the original person that I think is being transferred into the painting itself,” Patton said in the exhibition announcement. “So even though these family photographs are not our own family photographs, there is still this sort of universal aspect of humanness that comes across.”
Patton has received the Montague Travel Grant for research in Dresden, Germany, and Patton has completed artist residencies at the Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass Village, Minerva Projects and RedLine in Denver, the Studios at MASS MoCA and Eastside International in Los Angeles. She has exhibited in solo and group shows nationally, including her first museum solo at the CU Art Museum at the University of Colorado in Boulder.
When I’m working with colors, I’m thinking about one particular color that I am then building a color scheme around—sort of balance to make things pop,” said of the series at the Art Base. “When you think about a photograph it’s of a split second. Whereas a painting time almost doesn’t exist, so I like the idea of elongating the moment that the photograph initially represented with paint.”