In moments of complete stillness and silence, what are the colors and visions that entertain our senses?  What can they tell us about our interior lives?

As well as being clairvoyant self-portraits of the artist,  Patrick Semple’s work is a ritual;  a mirroring of the inner child beneath layers of daily, societal impressions.    The works are an invitation for the viewer to go within, have permission to feel, to peel back the layers and unveil the self.  An homage to the vulnerability of our colorful, private, subconscious lives where dreams originate.  An alchemy of body and imagination.

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Drawing from a plethora of media, the paintings are mostly done with watered-down acrylic and home-brewed dyes made from beets, turmeric, coffee and other miscellaneous pigments.   Spontaneity plays a key role in the use of media as much as the compositions themselves.  To begin, the un-primed canvas is tacked to the floor and has various mixes of paint spilled over it at random, allowing nature to have precedence over the composition.   Colors are then layered and allowed to dry at different intervals between pours.  Much of the painting is left to chance but the artist uses a motif of organic, intuitive forms that mimic nature, anatomy, and pure emanations of vision during his meditation practice.   It’s important for the process to remain spontaneous and without attachment to the outcome in the name of drawing from perfection which already exists anatomically.  A path of least resistance.

Patrick Semple graduated from The Evergreen State College with a bachelor’s in fine art.  He lives and works at his studio in the city of Olympia, Washington