About the Artist

Hi, I’m Christi Patterson! 

I create watercolor paintings for those who seek beauty, comfort, happy memories, and a place to go to get away from it all for a moment.

I create because I love the beauty of God's creation as seen in nature, and I love being around others. This is why I love painting outdoors, “en plein air,” and I like to show people’s personal stories as seen in the still life scenes they leave behind. 

We catch glimpses of people's lives in the bread crumb trails that they leave behind. A sight, a sound, a fragrance or emotion hint at an experience, whether profound or inconsequential, that defined a moment in someone's personal history. Our interpretations of those moments are as unique as our fingerprints, colored by our own pasts, perspectives and personalities.

When my son played baseball, I photographed everything - the players, the parents, the games, including every play and pitch, pre-game warm-ups, restaurants and hotels, because it was all life, and I wanted to remember all of it for both myself and the players and parents. You never know when you're going to want to look back and relive a memory. One of the parents commented that I was the “team historian." That was the first time I heard myself defined that way. That has since helped me put into words the goal of my art. I seek to capture the beauty of specific moments in time so that we can go back and revisit them, and in doing so be inspired and encouraged.

The thread that runs through everything I create, whether painting, drawing or photography, is to document and record temporal beauty. It may be in fleeting experiences like game winning moments, or in the constancy of a mundane still-life. The image triggers a memory, for example, of a person who passed through leaving their keys on the counter, or their shoes on the floor, or the dog that was sunbathing outside, but is no longer there.

I paint from life whenever possible because I want to see exactly what's there -- what's real in the moment. I love to paint plein air, because I get to experience the sun, the weather, the smells, the temperature, the trees in their particular hues on that particular day at that particular time of year. My paintings convey an impression of a scene or object, capturing the essence of an experience, evoking a memory or imagination, and reflecting life through a lens that sees beauty and finds God in ordinary things.