Daisy Patton

Daisy Patton’s cheerfully dysfunctional portraits are bound to remind you of pictures from somebody’s attic, those old crinkle-edged Kodak photos or studio shots that commemorate engagements, high-school graduations and informal family get-togethers. Yet there are sharp and unsettling differences. Faces in Patton’s paintings and her other art may be obliterated with garish masks of color, outrageous patterns take over sedate everyday attire and creeping vegetation threatens to engulf the unsuspecting subjects.

Patton has been fascinated by photography’s slippery documentary function, and by the artist’s role as voyeur, since before she received her MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University in Boston in 2011. In many of her series, Patton enlarges old studio photographs and embellishes them with inks or paint, often conferring a giddy surreality to the original subjects.

Other works are realized in embroidery or more traditional mediums like watercolor or oil on panel. In less than a decade, she has produced several striking bodies of work, a few of which are ongoing.

“Patton veils, conceals and reveals elements of the human figure in a way that entices the viewer to rediscover the familiar intricacies of human nature,” says Dariya Bryant, director of K Contemporary, in Denver. “Her delicate floral patterns lead the eye through the composition with intent, enveloping the viewer in a reverie of memory, identity and loss. Drawing attention to the facial expressions, hands and limbs — parts that express our innermost feelings outward — Patton relays the individual stories her subjects once lived and gives tribute to these lives in a beautiful, sorrowful, yet hopeful way.”

Over time, partly in response to the conservative political tide, Patton has been developing two series about reproductive rights — specifically, the issues of illegal abortion and forced sterilization (between 1907 and 1963, some 64,000 people were forcibly sterilized under eugenic legislation in the United States).

“These issues are two sides of the same coin,” she says. “The general public doesn’t remember how awful it was before Roe v. Wade, how many women died from abortions. I’m doing a lot of research, trying to find pictures of women and seeking out women who may still be alive who suffered forced sterilization.”

Patton’s art is teasingly ingratiating; often, its radical underpinnings take a while to digest. But when they do, the message packs a wallop.

Find original Daisy Patton art on 1stDibs.