ARTIST'S STATEMENT
My approach is abstract; I explore the processes of transformation in living matter through physical phenomena such as oxidation, erosion, sedimentation, and evaporation. Water, ink, rust, and wax become the vehicles for an exploration in which time acts as a material, contributing to the construction of the image.
My work develops from questions surrounding origins: the origins of forms, of art, and of the traces left by humans in their environment. I construct a pictorial language nourished as much by the observation of natural phenomena as by certain archaic images or symbolic structures that appear as recurring forms. They evoke organic growth, subterranean currents, and mental maps.
Since the late 1980s, I have developed a technique combining iron oxidation and the application of hot wax as a process of transformation and the inscription of time. The surfaces gradually change, becoming layered with strata, tensions, and areas of disappearance or emergence. The wax interrupts these changes, preserving a trace and fixing a transient state. This dialogue between alteration and preservation introduces an unstable temporality that runs through all my paintings.
The works often emerge in series, conceived within the same impulse, and then evolve slowly through the reactions and periods of waiting imposed by the process itself. I work primarily on the ground, accompanying the movement of water across the surface and the processes of deposition, dissolution, and concentration. After each stage, I must wait several hours before returning to the work - often several days when creating rust. Sometimes the work needs to be watered, almost like a garden.
I use a deliberately restrained palette dominated by deep blacks, ochres, and indigo blues. Black ink and ochres evoke an ancient memory of writing and painting, while indigo opens unto a more mental space, linked to landscape, breath, and travel. These polarities characterize series such as Oxides, La part de l’ombre, Blues, and Sorti de la nuit.
The image of the tree features prominently in my current research. It appears as much as a structure of life as it does as a form of thought. It is also a mirror of humanity that evokes for me pages of history linked to violence and war, as seen in the series Strange Fruit and L’arbre de Goethe. Its branches evoke growth, circulation, vulnerability, and resilience all at once.
Paper remains central to my practice because of its sensitivity, responsiveness, and capacity for memory. It also connects my pictorial work to my artist’s books, created in dialogue with writers and poets. The book thus allows for the construction of a shared space, akin to a musical score.
My painting seeks to make perceptible lingering temporalities, states of transition, and fragile balances. Between darkness and light, appearance and disappearance, it attempts not so much to represent the world as to reveal its invisible metamorphoses.
Patricia Erbelding, July 2026