Star AR​T

 

                   Artist Statement

 

 

 

 

 

 

     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“The road map of our lives is folded in such a fashion so as not to reveal the master route that runs across it.  Instead, as we journey on, we unfold it leaf by leaf and uncover new paths.” 

Jean Cocteau

                                                                     

 

The search for authenticity

                                                                                                 Patricia Ayité Artist Statement

                                                                                                            November 2014

 

Who am I, and why am I here?  Most of us wonder this, and spend a life-time searching for the answers – for a map to help us understand ourselves and our lives. 

The first place we look to is our family.  As babies, we mirror back smiles and coos, and eventually world and religious views, in our anxiousness to please and be accepted and find our place on this earth.  We also look to our friends, the country we call home, the comfort our culture and native language gives us, our rituals, our routines, our prayers and our curses.

Eventually, in our search for authenticity, and if we are self aware enough, we shed parts of our childhood upbringing and those masks that don’t quite fit our faces and our spirits.  We “rebel,” as we seek out those people and places, those colors and sounds whose voices find an echo in our own consciousness.  Sometimes we are a good “fit” with our families, and sometimes we aren’t.  That’s when it can feel constraining, when someone you love insists that you travel the same path they find themselves on, and you find that your call is to go another way.

I sensed the whisper of a different voice deep inside me when I was very young.  Since it didn’t always reflect what I was being taught, I attempted to drown it out because of the great love and respect I had for my parents and because of my “born into” identity as a Missionary Kid (MK) and a Preacher’s Kid (PK).  I learned to ignore my own self and lost touch with who I am.  It was years later, in my thirties, that I came to the point where I actually painted a word picture of how I saw myself:  The only blue M&M in a bowl of green ones. 

And so began the unfolding of the map of my life, Patricia’s life, the delightful and sometimes devastating discovery of new paths, paths that at times led me far away from the known sights, rhythms and smells of my childhood upbringing.  Just because I hear a different drum beat doesn’t mean I don’t honor and respect the blood that runs through my veins.  I pay silent homage to my grandmother Susanna, who was, along with her family, persecuted for her beliefs, who witnessed brutal murders and rapes in Russia before settling in British Columbia and bearing 14 children to her farmer/preacher husband.  How her hands must have itched to play her guitar and her heart composed many a poem, between toiling over the loads of laundry and cooking endless meals…  My Vermont grandmother and my other ancestors sing their songs of courage and hope to me too, and I listen, and I thank them.

Books, Music, Poetry, Nature and Authentic People have helped me in the search for my own voice.  Words and images have provided powerful keys to unlocking mysteries and truths that resonated within me.  That is probably why I love quotes so much, and why I have a journal dedicated to writing down the ones that speak to me, and why, more and more, I incorporate words and writing into my paintings.

 

My hope is that you will catch a glimpse of authenticity as you view my paintings.  They reflect different periods of my life, both inner and outer.  When I lived in the desert, I painted sand dunes, because that is what I saw, but I also painted flowers and circles and stars, because that is what I felt in my heart.  Now that I live in Colorado, I have painted aspens and mountains and cows and Palisade peaches, but I also paint straight lines and swirls, wine glasses and whimsical owls, because they represent the ebb and flow of the colors I sense and see in my mind’s eye, and feel with every fiber of my being. 

 

Welcome to “La Vie en Couleur.”  Welcome to a glimpse into my search for authenticity.

 

“We give short shrift to the mysterious twists and turns of our lives if we measure them only in terms of our careers, our annual incomes, and the prestige and security conferred by those things.  And remember, we all stumble, every one of us.  That’s why it’s a comfort to go hand in hand.”  EK Brough