Gallery Henoch | 4/8-5/1 | New York, NY

Coexistence

In Patricia Traub’s paintings, humans and animals enjoy a peaceful coexistence

In Patricia Traub’s paintings, humans and animals enjoy a peaceful coexistence—yet both exist in a non-contextual place.

Young African Elephant, for instance, stands on what appears to be shelf for a still life, isolated from its natural habitat against a black void. The giant animal is vulnerable in the bright light and its size indeterminate—is it a toy on a shelf or a 4-ton mammal out of context?Young African Elephant, oil on panel, 12 x 12"

Traub has been drawing animals since she was a child and over the years has drawn them in the Philadelphia Zoo, where she became a docent, and as far away as Kenya and Borneo where her awareness for humans as rescuers of other species and as protectors of the environment was heightened.

In 2001, as a teacher at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, she went to Egypt with her students and was struck by images on the stone reliefs of humans interacting with animals. When she returned, she began to simplify her compositions and to paint more naturalistic images of humans and their animal neighbors.Eastern Blue Bird, oil on panel, 12 x 12"

Rescuer with a Lemur, African Wild Dog, Two Rare Poultry, oil on panel, 12 x 12"

She recalled a small 13th-century egg tempera panel of St. Francis of Assisi at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in which St. Francis and a devotee are depicted isolated against a black background and began to isolate her subjects in a similar manner.

The young elephant is more than an object. Isolated and threatened in its picture space, it is painted with a precision that comes from a lifetime of observing, drawing and painting. She makes clay models of her subjects to study the effects of light on the figure. She also works to keep the black, negative space around the figure in balance to avoid the perception of the figure having been pasted onto the background.

Her subjects, like Eastern Blue Bird, glow with vitality despite their vulnerability.A Royal Palm Turkey, oil on panel, 12 x 12"