I paint to practice being present in body, mind, and spirit, a practice that serves me well as an artist seeking balance in all of life’s offerings. By staying in the moment with the soul-searching, meditative, curious inner dialog inherent to the creative process, I achieve the vision I seek.

As I paint in the silence of my studio, I listen for and attend to the sounds of creation, destruction, and rebirth, sounds that I connect to the internal and external harmonies and discords of life. I wait patiently for vibrating marks to emerge from the intricate surfaces I am honing and that call out to be nurtured further through the placement of personal and archetypal symbols. Using dots, random scribbles, and various line combinations, I orchestrate the parts into the whole.

Each sound produces an opportunity to ignore or make visible a potential idea. Occasionally, an image beckons through a transformational dream, as evidenced in the butterfly-bird, a phoenix rising in transcended form. My paintings are a reflection of the gifts that I receive from dreaming and waking life, and that I work to embody as I practice being with and following the impulses of movement, stillness, and sound.

Pat Mattina