Parrallels: The Architecture of Impermanence

Joe Patrick has spent a lifetime using art to depict transient, yet energetic moments in time, from the haphazard structures he focuses on in his paintings of Oaxacan marketplaces to his quickly drawn portraits of his friends. 

Joe spent nearly forty years teaching at The University of Iowa School of Art and Art History and has been creating art in Iowa for more than fifty years.  He has also been traveling to Oaxaca, Mexico for the past 40 years and now he and his wife spend half their year there. [....] Joe’s engagement with Oaxaca has given him abundant inspiration to paint a lifestyle that was not his own, but that he has grown to love and need in his world. Joe’s unique portraits depict subjects both in Iowa and Oaxaca, linking his two lives and homes. His portraits extend the sense of community and comfort as Joe draws the people who define his home, both in Iowa and Mexico.  [....]

Together the paintings and drawings exude a similar attitude – moments are fleeting and things may not look as they once did, but there is strength in the understanding of the impermanence of the world, both human and created.  [....].

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.