Northerm Parula with Oak Catkins, Plum Island

Patty Yehle creates bright, sunny oil paintings of still life and nature subjects. Patty’s oil paintings have a pleasingly graphic look to them, with slightly flattened planes of color and clearer-than-life delineation between foreground and background.

Nastursiums

I especially enjoy the paintings in Patty’s Flowers and Birds gallery, and the way that the artist uses shadow in her works. Each floral subject seems dramatically lit, despite the daytime brightness of Patty’s scenes. In some works, flower petals and leaves cast defined shadows on a background wall, creating a great sense of depth in the painting.

The front page of Patty's website

In other works, Patty layers landscape scenes with pale patterned trellis-like designs, effectively dividing the space of the painting and turning a straightforward nature painting into something more surreal. I enjoy these interventions, as I find they immediately create a sense of symbolism in the work, imbuing everything with an extra conceptual layer in the mind of the viewer.

Fruit Cluster