Patricia Lortie

Patricia was born in Quebec where she studied Industrial Design and Business Administration. Upon relocating to Calgary, she studied at the Alberta College of Art & Design and has been an active professional artist since 2000. In addition to painting and sculpting, she teaches at the Calgary Arts Academy and privately in her studio.

She currently serves on the Board of Directors of Regroupement Artistique Francophone de l'Alberta and promotes the visual arts in her local community through projects with the KO Arts Centre and an annual children's art show. In 2010, she was invited to show her sculpture project "Dare to Dream" at the Vancouver Olympics Cultural Olympiads.

 
Her work is motivated by a personal reflection on life and its contrasts -- dualities that inhabit us and constitute an integral part of our experience, conscious or inconscious, as human beings. She uses her observation of human experience and nature to express these dualities.

Through paint and sculpture, she presents metaphors that speak of our place in a world that controls us, where we are born, live and die like all other living beings but in the illusion of our own importance. Without losing sight of our place in the environment and trying to comprehend what, if any, control we may exercise, she looks for harmony and interrelationships in apparent contrasts, in movement and in color. Her work is a witness to life's emotional movements and to our unity with the environment.