Cole Gallery

Pat Clayton

Downstream from Eagle Falls by Pat Clayton
  Downstream from Eagle Falls
Lighted from Within by Pat Clayton
Lighted from Within
Autumn Reverie by Pat Clayton
  Autumn Reverie
Wild Peas by Pat Clayton
Wild Peas
Cliff at Tumwater Campground by Pat Clayton
  Cliff at Tumwater Campground
Last Light on the River by Pat Clayton
  Last Light on the River
Autumn River by Pat Clayton
Autumn River
Autumn Symphony by Pat Clayton
  Autumn Symphony
Last Days of Winter by Pat Clayton
Last Days of Winter
Winter on Nason Creek by Pat Clayton
  Winter on Nason Creek
White River Magic by Pat Clayton
  White River Magic
River Reflections by Pat Clayton
River Reflections
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Pat Clayton

My official art education began in 1997 when I began taking classes at Gage Academy of Art in Seattle,(then called The Academy of Realist Art). I was thrilled finally to take classes in representational portraiture taught by Juliette Aristides, Tony Ryder, and others.  My academic education had been in medicine; after 20 years of practice as a family doctor (with some drawing on the side) I soaked up those hours working with my creative brain.  I also participated in workshops at the Cape Cod School of Art, studying color theory. I enrolled in multiple workshops at the Scottsdale Artist School with artists including Matt Smith, Kenn Backhaus, Michael Malm, and Ray Roberts.  I studied more plein air painting with Russell Case in Sun Valley and Calvin Liang in Carmel.  More portraits with Jeff Watts at his atelier in Encinitas supplemented my training.   I began to paint full time in 1999.



Since 2008 I have been co-teaching an ongoing oil painting class with my friend Janice Kirstein (also a signature member of AIS) who is an outstanding colorist trained in the methods of the Russian Impressionist, Sergei Bongart, through his disciples Ron Lucas and Henry Stinson.  Her influence on my understanding of color temperature has been profound.



In 2014 I started experimenting with the palette knife again and found that it nudged me to see bigger shapes, use cleaner and broken color, minimize my strokes, be more intuitive and, most of all, stop and think before I applied a “knife-ful” of paint.  The special color effects that can be achieved by dragging layers of color over each other with the knife cannot be duplicated with a brush.  The texture adds additional appeal when the work is seen “in person” as opposed to viewed as a digital image. As the lighting changes, so do the reflections off the strokes. The painting comes to life.  Although I still do commissioned animal portraits, my primary painting style is now with the knife.



I currently work with Cole Gallery in Edmonds, WA and Scott Milo Gallery in Anacortes.