Patrick Dengate

I was born in 1960, a Michigan native who recently moved to Saint Paul, Minnesota. In college, I first studied biology, then switched to a study of art. In 1984 I earned a BFA from Wayne State University in Detroit.

I once heard in an interview a person who called himself a “hedonistic” researcher. That is, he delved only into things that fascinated him personally and which he thought worthwhile to pursue. In a similar sense, I am a “hedonistic” artist. Consistency of style and subject matter are of less importance to me than pursuing an impulse to create something I want to see, just for the sake of seeing it with my own eyes. It may be that I follow a variety of paths or methods to do this, rather than just one.

Older paintings are in a straightforward realist style. Newer representational works seek to create expressionistic images using thick brush strokes, wet-on-wet, using highly saturated colors.

Much of the work I loosely call “cubist,” in that it’s composed of intersecting geometric shapes which describe planes and forms. These forms result in abstracted, yet recognizable, images. Working this way has freed me from the constraints of accurate perspective and color—and instead use repetitive shapes and what I think of as “migrating color” to depict a landscape or a collection of objects, which tell a kind of story.

Throughout my life making paintings and drawings, has been a keen interest in woodworking. Whether through the making of woodcut prints, building small paddle and sailing craft, or sculptures inspired by wooden boat building methods, wood, like paint or ink, is a familiar medium in my hands.