The creative transformation of an unassuming blank surface is the craft perfected over 30 years by the multi-talented artist Pat Scheurich. Whether a stretched piece of canvas, an older residential wall in need of rebirth, a scrap of leftover wood, or a simple handmade greeting card, Scheurich lays down the broad range of ingredients of her art with a unique and innovative formula all her own.
Scheurich’s work is marked by her unusual use of seamless integration – melding colors, textures, finishes, and objects to create both familiar and unfamiliar special effects. Contrary to collage, which often allows individual images to retain their composition, Scheurich achieves a kaleidoscopic effect, where paints run like a stream into other mediums – pooling, blending, and making the most subtle liquid transition. Typically, it’s challenging to tell where one color starts and another is transformed. Her technique uses faux finishes and lusters to showcase the ways in which light can play with color, and how shadows can highlight her featured focal points. Layer upon layer of liquid mediums are laid down, creating peaks and valleys until this artist stands back and approves of the composition that lies within the four corners of a piece.
Scheurich’s inspiration is found in simply everything. She draws vision every day from the world around her -- with all its natural treasures, from the art of other cultures, and even from the mysterious relationship between the simple and the complex. She uses printed papers, gilded foils, homemade stamps, lacquers, patinas, and found materials to illustrate the connection between the natural world and the human experience. Her recipe for design often pays homage to historical images, icons, and the magical lessons of time. Often, she pulls images from ancient ruins, botanical drawings, illuminated manuscripts, or any visual antiquity. Some of her images are recognizable, while others take viewers on a journey only known to them.
Today, her studio anchors Pat’s Phoenix residence, serving as a laboratory for her energetic experimentation with a countless variety of mediums. When passing through her studio’s threshold, one is immediately immersed in a calculated melting pot of brilliant colors, muted tones, textured papers, ribbons and textiles, collectibles, and hundreds of bottles of paints, glazes, and gels.Dozens of canvases lean up against walls, resting patiently until Scheurich decides whether each one is finished, or simply in need of more loving layers or transformation. Sometimes, she will intuitively pull an older painting buried in the stack and pour leftover mixtures with a freshness and precision, as if she had worked on the piece only minutes before. Works of art grow up in her studio – never rushed or completed until they have fully taken on their perfected identity.