For the past few years, Patty L. Porter, an expressive realistic painter, has focused on honoring our area’s beautiful landscapes.  When she finds what she describes as a powerful portion of landscape, she chooses from it what speaks to her sensibilities. She is mindful of photographer Minor White’s statement: “Be still with yourself until the object of your attention affirms your presence.”

She begins–first by sitting quietly with her subject on location, interpreting the atmosphere, color, texture, and tonality of the site while doing a field sketch and then by developing an intimate relationship with the subject and the oil paint medium while creating a larger studio painting.

Time spent at the easel with rich yellows, reds, and deep blues can transport her to a warmer place. Surviving the cold grey skies of Ithaca’s winters has become a challenge over the years and the color pallet of this body of work has proven to be a tonic for the winter doldrums.   She wants the viewer to also feel the serene feeling of warmth and experience a tranquil feeling similar to the one she feels while working on these paintings in her studio. She feels her presence is affirmed through her paintings.

These paintings capture the spirit of place—what Nature has presented–for her viewers.  Her work honors beautiful locations at a time when development of our land is rampant and vast landscapes are being transformed into shopping plazas, industrial sites, and housing developments. Patty wants to engage viewers not only in an aesthetic manner but also in ways that will motivate them to preserve its beauty.