Patricia Kambitsch

Artist’s Statement and Biography

Why I paint (or see the straight version)

I paint because I was born the runt of a litter of saints and rebels.

because I daydreamed watching the wallpaper mural of the communion of saints during Mass.

because painting is confession, and painting is my penance.

I paint because wild cherry trees look like Aunt Barb’s bony fingers tugging rosary beads.

because the summer sun makes me homesick.

because the aliens on the cover of Astounding smile down on me.

because Grandma and Grandpa and the eternity of my eastern European ancestry would never, every have time for such foolishness.

because my mother never would.

I paint because my pigtailed sister, who is better at everything, told me that I couldn’t.

because art is better than gym and because math sucks. 

because a good and loving God would never have created long division.

because God created tubes of color instead.

because Jesus and Mary and Joseph smile down upon me.

Besides, my guardian angel looked the other way and because the devil made me do it.

I paint because I feel, I want, and I remember too much for words and whining is excessive and unnecessary.  I learned early that hardly anybody wants to listen, but almost everybody likes to look.

I paint because as a child my sophisticated older sister who recited Poe, Patchen, and Plath also took me to an art museum when I was too young to know any better.

because that same sister fell in love with Helmut at that same museum.

because Helmut was an art student.

I paint because the lips of forbidden men in True Romance are more succulent than Jello salad.                                        

because there wasn’t any heroin around when I quit smoking pot.

because a career as a flamenco dancer would have been too short lived.

because it’s socially acceptable to publicly obsess on naked bodies when you’re an artist.

because I am deeply, madly in love and any more poetry would have embarrassed everyone involved.

because I am often struck mute watching the halo in your eyes instead of what it was you just asked.

I paint because it’s hard work it's hard work it's hard work

 you don't know how hard I work

and everybody's got to fight sometime.

I paint out the day

out of rage.
out of spite.
out of boredom.
out of hunger.
out of tenderness.
out of context.

I paint for food.

for money
for power
so I might get laid.

I paint for salvation.

I paint so I might swaddle all of life’s beauty and pain and sin and death and glory neatly within a frame.

I paint so I can make you guess what I mean and if you’re right  and I don’t like you I can say you were mistaken, you just don’t get it.

because a  word is worth a million zillion pictures.

because paint is delicious and living and messy and human and naughty as a love letter.

because I want to tell you all I want is to be loved, but a brick is lodged in my throat.

I paint because I dream.

because I dreamed of brushes stuck in a pot of paint where my heart should be.

because I dreamed the devil was living in me and that I had grown dragon wings that beat against the roof of the attic when I tried to escape.

because I dreamed my mouth was sewn shut.

I paint because I woke up.

There is a full moon tonight and I’m running out of time.

I paint to learn.

I paint because I didn’t know what I felt or what I knew or who I was until I painted it.

I paint so I might jam along unjaded.

so I might might make it up as I go along.

To create what I never intended.