Fort Worth Star Telegram Sunday, Oct. 12, 2008
Creative Life: Artist Pat Gabriel’s landscapes with roiling cloudscapes
Artist, Pat Gabriel, 48, creative director and painter
Breakthrough moment: In March, Gabriel entered the Biennial show at the Fort Worth Community Arts Center. It was the first time in 20 years he had offered up one of his paintings for public scrutiny. On the strength of that one piece, Palo Verde Shadows, a painting he made in 2006, the center’s exhibitions committee invited him for a best-of exhibit, "Advisory Panel Selects," in September. This time, three of his atmospheric landscapes were included.
Day job: For the past 18 years, Gabriel has worked in the commercial art sector as a creative director at GCG Advertising in Fort Worth. He used to paint but put down his brushes when his family began to grow. Four years ago, he visited the studio of Randy Bacon, who had toiled in advertising and gave it all up to be a full-time artist. It provided Gabriel with some needed inspiration. "I thought, 'Gosh, look at this,’ " he says. "I was really inspired to get serious about my own painting." He began devoting his weekends to painting.
Weekend work: He built up a small body of work, often painting low-horizon landmasses with roiling cloudscapes. The dramatic vistas stood out in the best-of-show exhibition. Even though they weren’t hung together, they dominated the walls and overshadowed the neighboring works. There is something about his clouds that demands the viewer’s attention. They pull you toward Gabriel’s canvases and don’t relinquish their hold easily. His clouds are compelling.
"I couldn’t stop observing the heavens if my life depended on it," he writes in his artist’s statement. "Often, I find myself on the side of the road staring out my car window and seeing it all in pure strokes of paint. When I am not at my easel, I’m still painting in my head. The duality and tension of places where the natural and the man-made collide is very interesting to me; I see it as a symbolic balance of dark and light. I see the light and happiness but cannot escape the dark, realizing how tightly they are woven; one cannot truly be experienced without the other."
Gaile Robinson
Star Telegram Art and Design Critic
From program for Advisory Panel Selects Show,
Fort Worth Community Arts Center
In both subject matter and artistic process, Patrick Gabriel’s work acknowledges the ever present but rarely articulated balance existing within the natural world. His work successfully navigates the space in between the austere and the sublime, between the rugged road and the satiated sky, and between manmade and heaven sent. In doing so, Gabriel’s work conflates the boundaries separating traditionally opposing forces.
In Gabriel’s painting, Roadside Storm, Mesocyclone, an overly animated sky is tempered by a stationary object that, itself, implies kinetic movement; a tranquil, arid landscape seemingly shudders in anticipation of an imminent deluge. In Two Travelers, a vivid sunset is offset by dark, silhouetted forms both natural and manmade, in the foreground. In both paintings, the intangible space in between extremes is filled as juxtaposed objects gravitate towards the other, reminding the viewer that opposites are not always too far apart.
Justin Holt
Advisory Panel Member, Fort Worth Community Arts Center
Several of my works featured at Artspace111
in American Landscape: Urban/Rural
DFW.com Wednesday, Mar. 25 2009
Artists bring different techniques to wide-open landscapes
Artists bring varied interpretations to vast space that lies west of Fort Worth
by Gaile Robinson
Feeling blue
As for the blue-infused landscapes, these are best handled by Eric Stevens and Pat Gabriel. Gabriel’s paintings are primarily cloudscapes with a low horizon line; these come close to relating to an African savanna and are immediate crowd-pleasers. He will often put a curtain of impediment between the viewer and the clouds — a tangle of scraggly bushes or dozens of electrical wires will stretch across the field of view.
“It’s the little bit of man-made meets wide-open space. What I am looking at is the sky, but I like the way it looks through trees. Lately I’ve been interested in light towers or electrical towers,” he said. “I like their relationship with the sky and clouds, what they do when you’re looking at the sky through them.”
Excerpt from
For the entire write-up, please visit the Fort Worth Star Telegram
Preservation is the Art of the City
September 5 – 26 2009
Fort Worth Community Arts Center
The opening night pre-sale reception had a fantastic turn out, thanks to Historic Fort Worth. I was awarded the Gail and Bill Landreth Award in memory of Gene Owens for the miniature driving paintings.
Click the image at right to see all the miniatures.
To read more click the link below:
The 2009 Texas Artists Coalition
Juried Membership Show
August 7 – 30 2009
Fort Worth Community Arts Center
Juror: Kevin Vogel, Director of Valley House Gallery in Dallas.
To read more about the show and Juror see the links below:
I am very happy to announce that I was one of seven artists awarded a prize at the TAC show. As I understand it, only thirty-one artists were selected to exhibit, from over one hundred and twenty members.
Cityscapes, Storms and Lines
a series of miniature paintings were recently shown at Artspace111’s
Paintings, Prints, and Presents
December 10 – January 14, 2009
current, recent and past:
Artspace111’s Paintings, Prints, and Presents reviewed in ARTnews
Excerpt from: In oil studies for larger, more complex endeavors, Pat Gabriel offered skies dissected by telephone poles and power lines. These often overlooked representatives of the grid became objectionable lead players, relegating the artist’s usually transfixing skyscapes to supporting roles as backgrounds of blue. – Gaile Robinson
for entire write up see ARTnews
February 2010, page 115
Lines 4
8.5” x 5.5” oil on paper 2009
Some of my latest work will be shown at Artspace111 during
Opening March 27, 2009
Spring Gallery Night 2 – 9 pm
The detail at right shows the scale and complexity of this new work. Click the picture to go to the full finished image.
Hunting Art Prize turns 30
It was my pleasure to attend the Hunting Art Prize 30th anniversary Gala as one of 134 finalists, selected out of the 1,400 artists that submitted work. I’m looking forward to entering again in 2011.
The Hunting Art Prize, which is sponsored by the international oil services company Hunting PLC, is a prestigious annual competition open to Texas artists. Its $50,000 award is the most generous annual art prize in the U.S. and has helped to build the reputations and support the careers of distinguished artists for 30 years.
Painting workshop
Cloudscapes in Oil
Presented by Artspace111
I was pleased to conduct a painting workshop at Artspace111 on July 24, 2010. Thanks to those of you who attended! It was a challenging yet successful day. Above are a few of the fine paintings created.
2010 Preservation
is the Art of the City
September 10 – 25 2010
Fort Worth Community Arts Center
The recently finished painting West Berry and 4 miniature driving paintings will be offered at the upcoming PAC show for Historic Fort Worth, Inc. Please join us on gallery night Saturday, September 11.
Click the detail image at right to see the full painting.
Click here and scroll to the bottom
to see Driving in Fort Worth, 9, 10, 11 and 12
To read more click the link below:
The Eyes of Texas:
Texas Art and Texas Light
Excerpts from the article
Summer 2010
A new essay by Frederick Turner in American Arts Quarterly
has much to say about Texas painters including many in North Texas
Texas is proverbially huge and various. East Texas, with its cedar bayous and the Gulf, with its enormous hazy horizons, is utterly at odds with the cartoon Texas of the longhorn skull half-buried beside a saguaro cactus. What the Texas eye shares, though, is a common hopefulness, a sort of gritty mysticism, a quirky deadpan wit, a deep respect for craftsmanship and a passionate love of freedom in all its forms. The most obvious place to find these characteristics is in Texas landscape painting...
Patrick Gabriel captures every mood and aspect of the Texas light, from the flat, sun-baked afternoon to the pinkish thundercloud over the high-tension power lines, to the soft evening over the prairie.
Frederick Turner
American Arts Quarterly
The Presence of Light: Sky and Light in the Texas Landscape
Exhibition runs November 19 through December 18, 2010
Reception with the artists
Saturday December 4th, 5 to 8 pm
Gallery talk with the artists
Saturday December 11th, 2 to 4pm
Curated by Eric Stevens
Fort Worth Public Library summer 2011
CONTEM?ORARIES
I’m happy to announce that my painting Fragile Spring was juried into the 2011 Hunting art prize.
Fragile Spring
selected for
show poster
Fragile Spring was chosen for the
2011 Hunting art prize poster image.
Cheers to
Hunting PLC!
The three major photorealist painters –– Daniel Blagg, Nancy Lamb, and Pat Gabriel –– are equally skilled but demonstrate three very distinct approaches. In Gabriel’s moody landscapes, depicting “the collision of the natural and the man-made,” according to his artist’s statement, he wields his paintbrush like a sword –– the stuttering lines in his stratus clouds are staggeringly precise and his partially silhouetted trees solid. Blagg, an appreciator of urban blight, has a touch that, especially in the shadowy “Lonesome Cowboy,” occasionally borders on impressionistic, and Lamb adds depth to even the daintiest strand of hair or wrinkle in fabric in her colorful mises en scène.
Fort Worth Library’s CONTEM?ORARIES
Big names — and even bigger ideas — abound in this impressive group show.
Excerpt from
Fort Worth Weekly August 17, 2011 Anthony Mariani
Preservation
is the Art of the City
Fort Worth Community Arts Center
Through September 2011
The show is over, but if you wish to purchase any remaining work click the link below to go to the on line gallery
Upcoming exhibitions
West Texas and Houston
Contemporary Texas Regionalists
February 15 — March 3, 2012
The Haley Memorial Library and History Center
1805 West Indiana
Midland, Texas, 79701
432-682-5785
March 6 — 11, 2012
The Gage Hotel
Highway 90W
Marathon, Texas 79842
432-386-4205
5th Annual Texas Aesthetic Exhibition
May 11 — July 28, 2012
William Reaves Fine Art
2313 Brun Street
Houston, Texas 77019
713-521-7500
More information to come as available
