THE LIFE & CAREER OF ARTIST MARGARET JORDAN PATTERSON
By Victoria Chick
ON BIG BLEND RADIO: Contemporary figurative artist Victoria Chick talks about the life and art of Margaret Jordan Patterson and gives an update on the local happenings in the art community of Silver City, New Mexico. Listen here in the YouTube player or download the podcast on Spreaker, PodBean, or SoundCloud.
Margaret Jordan Patterson was born in Java on a sailing ship in which her family lived, her father being the Captain.
Drawing became a way of learning for her. Possibly you had a Prang watercolor box as a child? In the 1860s, Louis Prang, who believed in art education, produced instruction manuals for children. Margaret Patterson used his correspondence course as her first art instruction.
When she was 18, her parents sent her to study at the Pratt Institute in New York. She was influenced by east coast artist Arthur Dow to do color woodcuts for which she is known.
She became head of the art department at Dana Hall School in Massachusetts, a job that allowed her to travel in the summers.
She was greatly influenced by the light of the Mediterranean in her travels to Italy.
Her work was exhibited widely in east coast galleries and the public gained a larger appreciation of her work after she received awards at the Panama-Pacific International Exhibition in 1915 and a medal from the Philadelphia Watercolor Club in 1939. Museums that have her work include the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Oakland Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and, in England, the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Victoria Chick is the founder of the Cow Trail Art Studio in southwest New Mexico. She received a B.A. in Art from the University of Missouri at Kansas City and awarded an M.F.A. in Painting from Kent State University in Ohio. Visit her website at www.ArtistVictoriaChick.com
