Patricia Thomas-Hunsinger

In any given moment we have two options: to step forward into growth or step back into safety.

Abraham Maslow

Over the past three decades, I have been expressing myself through my art at various shows. I have felt my art evolve, not just from show to show but even from piece to piece. The journey I have been on had roots in a childhood spent playing in the tributaries and woods in the Susquehanna River valley. The forms of natural things found their way into my sketches and sculptures. Perhaps the complex interplay between repetitions, patterns and stark uniqueness in nature lead me to explore printmaking as a modality. My work had explored the figurative aspects of the world I interacted with. In particular, I had found a muse in the transformation of youth to adolescence and to adulthood. The changes invoke both growth and loss and lead me to explore more of the natural world and momentous changes affecting our environment. Our world evolving at a pace that has not happened previously. The world, and ourselves, seem to be in a constant flux that is simultaneously ponderously slow and breathtakingly rapid. I sometimes stand outside this all, stand outside myself, and observe. Not to judge or even to try to comprehend it all, but more feel what the influences are and how to let that lead to expression in my art. Images can come with pin-point clarity or vague suggestiveness. Images can inform with a sense of responsibility, clever subtleties, or a spiritual suggestiveness, but may also connect with the viewer on a more visceral level, freeing emotional response from the intellectual reaction. I have found that building blocks of my most personally meaningful works have involved my experimentation with light, color and shape. These aspects are brought to the fore in my recent pieces, and I realize they have always been there, and have been pushing me to step forward.