PATTY CATEURA
Some Place: Color Field Narratives

22 April – 31 May, 2003
Reception: Thursday, 1 May, 2003 5:30 – 7:30 pm

Patty Cateura’s paintings draw inspiration from the American color field tradition of the 60’s
by placing abstract narratives of contemporary urban life within a larger world of nature and color. Floating and fragmented vignettes allude to city life, architecture and technology. Yet, nature prevails in hills, rivers, trees and pure color fields. Using both abstraction and realism, Cateura playfully juxtaposes man-made objects with nature and the infinite expanse of monochromatic space. In Cateura’s paintings, the opposing realities of nature and contemporary urban life co-exist enigmatically within a pure color universe.

As Calvin Reid (critic and writer for Art in America and Bomb magazines) observed “The simplicity and cheerful calm of Cateura’s paintings belie the rigorous process behind their creation. Cateura’s works are visual tone poems that try to reconcile the open spaces and uncluttered sensibilities of rural life with the density of urban spaces and the urbane life. Her paintings suggest both the stark linear elegance of minimalist painting and the visual serenity of Asian art, accompanied by a strategic, almost cartoonish, figuration and a lively embrace of retro-pop influenced visual design. Her works offer broad planes of vivid blues, greens and magentas against smaller areas alive with pattern or small, deftly rendered icons that may or may not have narrative content. Cool, calm and collected, Cateura’s paintings combine an eerie tranquility, a toe-tapping pop palette and a deliberately constructed sense of visual equilibrium.”

Cateura, a graduate of Oberlin College, MICA and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, lives and works in New York City. She has been a painting fellow at MacDowell, Yaddo, Millay and VCCA. This will be her first solo San Francisco show.