PATRICIA UDELL
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Patricia Udell’s body of work explores color, space and the female form across a variety of media. Early in her career, Udell created a series of small bronze sculptures exploring the female form. Over time, she progressed beyond the figurative in favor of more abstracted examinations of shape, line and negative space through series of monochromatic plaster reliefs and painted reliefs of corrugated cardboard and wood. In each, colorful, curvilinear bands streak vertically across a white background creating a linear, yet organic assemblage of shapes contained within an understood rectangular background. Each band curves and bends with angular crooks and semicircular arches, molding the negative space between the sculptural elements into shapes as dynamic as the plaster itself.
Udell further distilled this concept into a series of colorful flat gouche paintings. Similar in composition to her sculptures, she blurs the distinction between form and negative space by assembling vibrant bands of colors running up and down the paper in what Udell describes as a, “back and forth between gesture, positive and negative space. Each band of color is separated from one another with a thin white line, reinforcing the impression that the shapes are individual units rather than a cohesive mass”.
Describing her work as a “visual breath,” Udell’s seeks to evoke an emotional response in viewers, stating that, “the joy [she has] for simplicity allows the viewer to have a moment of happiness with nothing asked of them when looking at [her] work.”
Udell received a B.A. in Design of the Environment and a B.F.A. in Sculpture from the Universtiy of Pennsylvania in 1978 and 1979. She also studied at the School of Visual Arts and Rhode Island School of Design.
She has been a member of the Board of Overseers at the Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania since 2018.
