Patricia Watwood (b. 197l) has exhibited at galleries and institutions worldwide. Museum shows include the Oglethorpe, Arnot, Joseloff, Bruce, and Dahesh. Artistic success, for Watwood, was born out of natural talent and her diligent studies, having earned an MFA with Honors from New York Academy of Art and studying with Jacob Collins of the Water Street Atelier, and Ted Seth Jacobs at the Ecole Albert Defois in France.

Watwood states, “Formal training is the indispensable underpinning of my practice. I seek to follow and build upon the artistic intelligence and traditions of the past, and bring them anew to my own generation.” Watwood’s style is Contemporary Classicism, which combines classical painting techniques with the language of representation. Representation (painting recognizable objects) makes our common visual language a means of communication between viewer and artist, and the painting can become like a poem that the viewer reads and relates to their own experience.

Watwood’s paintings travel through worlds of mythology, allegory, and contemporary human life. Her images are carefully designed to convey the beauty and stillness of the visual world. Philosophically, the paintings reflect the artist’s search for meaning and desire for spiritual connection with both subjects and viewers. “Faith in the Wilderness” (2011) is an example of Watwood’s combination of classical technique, contemporary sensibility and personal philosophy. The artist describes the work as an allegory about her motives for painting. She writes, “The model is the unattainable beauty of ‘perfect’ painting. The landscape is the urban jungle that is my world. Faith is what is required to traverse the distance between the hope and the reality. The wilderness is many faceted—uncertain prospects, an uncharted course, the complex art world, or even just the impossible passage across that expanse of cheek between the nose and ear. I pick up my palette and keep traveling.”

Her style has caught the eye of editors, who have featured her in numerous art publications, including twice landing the cover of American Artist magazine. Her paintings are in private collections and her commissions include a portrait of the astronomer Cecelia Payne-Gaposchkin for Faculty Hall at Harvard University; the journalist and anti-lynching campaigner Ida B. Wells for the Kennedy School of Government; and the former Mayor of St. Louis, Clarence Harmon, for the St. Louis City Hall.

A survey of Watwood’s paintings from 2000-present can be seen this October to December 2011 in a solo show at the St. Louis University Museum of Art, entitled “Patricia Watwood: Myths & Individuals”. The show travels to the Forbes Gallery in NYC for exhibit ion February to April 2012.

Aside from studio painting, Watwood has been an adjunct professor of drawing at New York Academy of Art and has given lectures and workshops across the country with Teaching Studios of Art, BACAA, the Portrait Society of America, and Studio Incamminati. She is a writer and blog contributor for American Artist and Artist Daily publications.

Watwood lives with her husband and two daughters in Brooklyn, New York.