BIOGRAPHY
Gabrielle Patrone is an artist and writer who recently received her Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in painting and BA in Art History at Rhode Island College (RIC). Her art practice marries her passion for art historical research and love of storytelling to inform investigations of time and memory—the fine line that separates observed and imagined realities. Throughout her undergraduate career she has been recognized for her craft, being awarded annual Talent Awards from the RIC Art Department and selected for juried shows including the Wickford Art Association’s Emerging Artists Exhibition and Providence Art Club’s College Scholarship Exhibition. Spring 2023, Gabrielle curated a group exhibition, P A T I N A, which showcased student work that explored the elusiveness of time and memory. Gabrielle is also a recipient of Fulbright Independent Research grant studying Indigenous (Métis) beadwork at Carleton University, Ottawa. She currently works at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum of Art as a curatorial intern in the department of Prints Drawings & Photographs.
My collection of work investigates the fickle nature of time and memory, delineating corporeality from intangibility, concreteness from ambiguity. Spurred by a desire to reconnect with my forebears, I turned to my late grandparents’ photo albums from the 1950’s, curious as to how I could use the still black and white images to convey the liveliness and emotionality of a particular moment in time. Through careful study of these images, creating composites of individual photos and sketches, I produce impressions of the past that waver between fully and partially remembered.
The interplay between drawing and painting informs these works. Remnants of a sketch and perspective lines peek out from underneath layers of thin glazes. Juxtaposed against solid paint application, these “unfinished” moments, while appearing “unremembered,” exude a sense of vitality and breathability. In a similar way, relationships between saturated and unsaturated color, light and shadow identify memories both revived and forgotten. Based on studies from life, I attempt to create “invented color,” challenging me to create my own light sources and imagine how light and color would have interacted together in real spaces. In this way, I want the color to be so convincing as if produced from my own memory. My compositional structure invites the viewer closer to partake in an intimate moment yet keeps them just outside of the subject’s grasp. The repetition of diagonal lines (literal and implied) establishes visual relationships between the figures, creating an arrangement that continuously moves one’s eye around the scene. I want the audience to feel as perplexed as I am, combing through these moments from the past that—while not experienced directly, feel familiar, recognizable. Viewers are met with alternating instances of visual clarity and illumination, concealment and obscurity. Memory becomes tangible when one can locate where fragments of a particular moment fade and resurface.
I draw from the works of Impressionists, Joaquín Sorolla, Mary Cassatt, and Henri Toulouse Lautrec, particularly for their understanding of light and color, expressive mark-making, and the entwinement of drawing and painting. However, I also turn to mid-twentieth century Social Realists, Raphael Soyer and Reginald Marsh, as a retrospect glance into how the world was observed at that time. As I approach my subject matter from a contemporary lens, it is important to investigate how color, space, and composition drive these works.
While subject matter and representational imagery inform my practice, my ongoing investigation is geared toward better understanding the function of color in a conceivable environment, the importance of activating the environmental space, and how composition creates interaction between the subject and the viewer.