Patricia Bellan-Gillen
March 9 - April 12, 2013
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 9, 4 - 6 PM

Patricia Bellan-Gillan generates images from her research of historical, spiritual, and religious iconography. Her meticulously rendered subjects, often animals, are set in painterly atmospheric abstract fields.  Symbols are mixed with stories from contemporary popular culture, her interest in science, literature and art, as well as her own personal narrative. Through retelling stories and recycling images of the past she creates new work layered with meaning and contradictions, combining realism and abstraction, humor with nostalgia, and the natural world with the cultural. She says: “I find absolute exhilaration in mark making, from the controlled and academic to the childlike and spontaneous. I often look to the work of outsider artists for inspiration and awe. I want to achieve a weird elegance. I welcome provocation and puzzles. I would like my paintings to confront the viewer simultaneously with beauty and awkwardness and to mediate grace with humor”.

Patricia Bellan-Gillen received an M.F.A. in Printmaking from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and a B.F.A. in Printmaking and a B.S. in Art Education from Edinboro State College, PA. Her paintings, prints and drawings have been the focus of over 35 solo exhibitions across the U. S., including venues in Washington DC, Chautauqua, NY, Las Cruces, NM, Albany, NY, Bloomington, IL and Portland, OR.  Her work has been included in numerous group shows in museums, commercial galleries, university galleries, and alternative spaces.  Venues have included: Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY, Chelsea Museum of Art, New York, NY, Frans Masreel Centrum, Belgium, and the Tacoma Museum of Art, WA. Her awards include an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Pittsburgh Artist of the Year from Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, and The Ryan Award for Excellence in Teaching from Carnegie Mellon University. She lives in rural Burgettstown, Pennsylvania and is a Professor of Art at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

This exhibition is funded in part by Price Chopper's Golub Foundation, Hacker Boat Company, Inc., and the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency. The Courthouse Gallery hours during exhibitions are Tuesday through Friday 12 – 5 pm, Saturday 12 – 4 pm, and all other times by appointment. The Courthouse Gallery is located at the side entrance of the Old County Courthouse, corner of Canada and Lower Amherst Streets, Lake George, NY.