Pat Boas | Scripts
June 5 - July 12, 2025
First Thursday: June 5, 5:30 - 7:30 pm
Elizabeth Leach Gallery is pleased to present Scripts, an exhibition of new paintings by Pat Boas. In Scripts, Boas continues to investigate embodied language and gesture, creating vibrant abstract paintings of varying “frequencies.”
The word “script” can refer to a text or handwriting, to a plan of action or a sequence of commands. Boas’ Script paintings begin with a lexicon of forms related to the artist’s longstanding interest in the activity of reading and develop in a slow process of obscuring and revealing. Thinking of reading as a negotiation between positive and negative space, the works focus not on the formal structure of letters and phrases, but on the movements, marks, edges and interior spaces related to the presentation of language, and the mysterious, immaterial processes by which those marks become thought.
Color remains an important element. Alternating layers of opaque vinyl paints and transparent acrylic glazes, the artist achieves dark, jewel tones accentuated with saturated areas of color. Alongside the Script paintings, Boas is presenting works that go “off-script.” Like seeds from a parent, the compositions of these works are drawn from passages of the Script paintings, yet their handling is more spontaneous and direct. While some are finished quickly, others lie in wait for the right moment, providing occasions to explore the impact of thought and “thoughtlessness” on their making.
Pat Boas’ paintings mine the gap between body, space, language, and perception. Committed to abstraction, she is guided by a collage sensibility that brings together disparate orders and fragmented artifacts, and incorporates suggestions of figuration, competing spatial systems, and art historical references as they arise. Elizabeth Leach Gallery has been exhibiting Pat Boas' work since 2010 and has represented her since 2015. Her work has been shown at the Portland Art Museum, PDX Contemporary, the Art Gym and Oregon Contemporary (Portland, Oregon), the Schneider Museum of Art (Ashland, OR), the Hallie Ford Museum (Salem, OR), and the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art (Eugene, OR). Nationally her work has been exhibited at the Center for Contemporary Art (Santa Fe, NM), the Boise Art Museum (Boise, ID), the Salt Lake Art Center (Salt Lake, UT), the Nicolaysen Museum (Casper, WY), the Whatcom Museum (Bellingham, WA), the Eiteljorg Museum (Indianapolis, IN), and the Cleveland Museum of Art (Cleveland, OH). She is a 2017 Hallie Ford Visual Arts Fellow. Select honors, fellowships, grants and residencies include the Bonnie Bronson Fund, Caldera Arts Foundation, the Corporation of Yaddo, The Ford Family Foundation, Harold and Arlene Schnitzer CARE Foundation, Jentel Foundation, Oregon Arts Commission, Oregon College of Arts and Craft, Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Portland Art Museum, and Oregon’s Regional Arts and Culture Council. Reviews of Boas’ work have appeared in Art in America and Art Papers. She is a professor emerita in the School of Art + Design at Portland State University.