Pat Kagan

Trained in music before dedicating her life to visual art, Pat Kagan’s oil and watercolor paintings remain undeniably rhythmic. Lines and colors skip and swirl through her compositions in dizzying gestures that recall the abstract expressionist style of Kandinsky. Finely tuned attention to light and color testifies to Kagan’s childhood in South Africa, its strong sun and bold blue sky. Now living outside Washington DC, her work has evolved dramatically from portraits initially, and then colorful compositions with certain figurative features, into a lively play of abstract forms in black, white and red.

As stark lines swivel, flatten and broaden into thick strips, Kagan creates an impression of visual music, offering a virtuoso rendering of movement, finesse and energy. In earlier works grounded by figurative forms, a variety of strong colors contributes to this sense of musical energy, reaffirming dynamics of movement and tempo conveyed by Kagan’s linear arrangements. Whether painting actions or creating action paintings, her work brings an enveloping, ebullient creative energy to elegant and sensuous forms.