Nature's Artist

Thriving landscapes and floral portraits that soar with color fill Patricia Reynold's paintings with natural emotion.

When Reynold's was asked to present an artist's statement years ago, she said, "I paint my feelings, dreams and visions; the beautiful atmosphere of our universe is my vehicle for expression."

"If I touch the viewer, then I speak to him in the unity of mankind, if I touch myself, I have taken a giant step in life near the insurmountable past—the universal search—'Who am I?'"

Reynolds is known first and foremost as a watercolor artist. However, she tends to be more realistic when she does impressionistic and some abstract oil paintings. She is chiefly a studio painter, except when she travels. But, even then, she develops everything in a studio.

Her studio is comprised of two galleries and a workroom, located in the lower level of her house. She works with aquarelles, watercolors, pastels and collages. Sometimes she works with acrylics without brushes, using only a plastic bag over her hand."I just want a certain effect, and whatever it takes to get it," Reynolds says.

Reynolds is inspired by nature and has a good visual memory linked to her love of it. "I paint why I wanted to paint something," she explains. " Not the place itself, if the colors, or the light contrast, whatever I saw I bring back to my mind's eye."

She has traveled to and painted in places such as Scotland, Ireland, France, Italy, Africa, Portugal and many of the Caribbean islands. Most of her trips were self-funded or done while traveling with her husband, who worked as a Chevrolet auto dealer.

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Reynold's constant source of inspiration, as seen here in Champlain Valley Patchwork, is the North Country atmosphere

In 1953, she fell in love with the North Country as well as her husband, Carlyle R. Reynolds of Willsboro. They are the proud parents of two children. At 68, Reynolds has been painting for forty years. She has been alone for the past eleven years due to her husband's death, but her son is half an hour away and her daughter lives in Maine. She also has five grandchildren.

photo by Howard Jennings

Patricia Reynolds,has had a long and fruitful career.She can't imagine living without painting.

She was born in Westchester County where she attended summer schools. Her father Edwin Steeg was an artist as was his father Henry Steeg. She is largely self-taught. She also attended Plattsburgh State University for one year, studying with artists such as Robert Whitney, Barbara Necchis, Ellis Hollander, and Mario Cooper, the former president of the American Water Color Society. Not all of them are from the North Country but they came and did workshops at the Old Forge Art Center.

"I was born with the need to create and have always done it in one form or another all my life," says Reynolds. "I was always exposed to it and very much in awe of things they had done and the materials that were made available to me."

Reynolds' biggest thrill was when she was included in the National Viewers Show and American Watercolor Show, having won awards in both. She was also made a signature member of the Midwest Watercolor Society, which is one of only two national societies that still adhere to the acceptance of transparent water colors. She has won major awards including a gold medal at the Salmagundi Club in New York City.

She has arumatoid disease called scleraderma that affects all her internal organs, hands and feet, but it doesn't interfere with her work. However, she is always on the road, visiting her main doctor in Albany and four specialists in Plattsburgh. "I resent it," Reynolds says. " It gets busy."

Reynolds acknowledges that to her, work represents sanity. She sometimes works on commission but asks many of questions before she accepts a job. If she doesn't connect with the job, she refers them to another artist.

Reynolds has become a leading figure in the Adirondack Art World and has reached a broader audience with exhibits in London, New York, Paris, Montreal and Saudi Arabia.

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Vineyards, 1987, Chassagne Montrachet,Burgandy, France,oil.

The misty heat and the heady smell of the grapes gave a hypnotic undulating effect as the patterns faded in the distance.

She can't imagine living without painting because as she gets older, it takes longer to do everything. She has worries about continuing her work but is inspired when she reads about other artists that continue until they die.

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