Patton Blackwell: Now and Then
July 24
6:30-8:30, Artist Talk at 7PM
Richland Library Main Gallery
Columbia SC
Exhibition until Sept 2.
In Now and Then, artist Patton Blackwell invites viewers into a sweeping visual journey across time, memory, place, and perception. Spanning works created between 1989 and 2026 in Brazil, Italy, California, and South Carolina, the exhibition brings together more than a dozen large-scale acrylic paintings on linen and canvas, along with a monumental triptych, revealing both the continuity and evolution of Blackwell’s artistic vision over decades.
For Blackwell, “now” and “then” are not opposites, but interconnected states of experience. The paintings exist outside of fixed time or geography, allowing past and present to coexist within the same visual space. Works created decades ago continue to resonate within newer paintings, while current works carry traces of earlier explorations in gesture, color, movement, and form. A painting begun in one moment may reach its final resolution years later, shaped by lived experience, shifting consciousness, and the passage of time itself.
Blackwell lived in Brazil for fourteen years, and the energy, luminosity, and atmosphere of Rio de Janeiro remain deeply embedded in her work. The triptych Onda, painted in Rio, reflects the vivid light and rhythm of Brazil while also embodying the artist’s broader visual language. Her travels through Japan, Turkey, Europe, Israel, and North Africa likewise continue to influence her paintings, expanding their emotional and spiritual dimensions.
Though abstract, Blackwell’s paintings are grounded in the natural world and in human experience. Layers of sweeping brushwork, luminous color, and dynamic forms evoke landscape, water, vegetation, movement, and memory without depicting them directly. Her work embraces tension and balance: light and dark, presence and absence, control and accident, immediacy and reflection.
Blackwell’s work has been exhibited in museums and galleries here and abroad, including exhibitions organized by the U.S. Department of State. In Brazil, critics observed how her paintings seemed to merge “the color and energy of Brazil” with “the daring, experimental nature of the United States.” Yet Blackwell’s work resists fixed cultural definitions, instead suggesting an ongoing dialogue between places, experiences, and ways of seeing.
The title Now and Then extends beyond the familiar phrase meaning “occasionally.” For Blackwell, it speaks to the eternal present and to the way time deepens understanding. The act of painting itself becomes a meditation on impermanence, memory, and transformation — a process of being fully present while remaining connected to what has come before, while also holding an awareness of the future. Her work reflects a sense of timelessness and interconnectedness, where past, present, place, memory, and experience continually inform one another.
As viewers move through the exhibition, they are invited not to search for singular meanings, but to experience the paintings as open spaces of reflection, energy, and discovery. Each work stands on its own while remaining connected to a larger continuum of artistic exploration that has unfolded across more than four decades.