Biography

My name is Patrick Grugan. I am a painter and printmaker, and I’ve studied art at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and elsewhere. I’ve also been working to help build a movement to end poverty, led by poor people, for over a decade. My long-term goals are to continue to develop an artistic practice that supports, and is inspired by, my anti-poverty work, and to help other artists do the same.

Throughout history, arts and culture has been a powerful tool within social change movements. Art can make manifest the spirit of the movement and the times; it takes the goals and aspirations for a better world and makes them concrete, accessible, even makes them seem more possible. Art can help inspire ordinary people to do amazing things. At the same time, during and after social change movements, there is often an explosion of artistic invention and achievement, as the excitement and new possibilities opened by the movement explode into the artistic scene.

In other words, art can help the process of changing the world, and when the world changes, art is infused with new energy and power. Both art and social change help to develop the other. That’s the dynamic that I want to use my work to unleash.

To start to figure out how to do this, four years ago I organized the School of Arts and Culture of the University of the Poor, a national group of artists working with the poor people’s movement. We’ve held three multi-media shows since then, and have conducted a survey on artists and health care. This site shows some of the art that this work has inspired. But this is only a beginning.

My present work is looking, on the one hand, at some of the key figures that helped to develop American Capitalism, and, on the other hand, some work based on some of the experiences of poor people in this country. For this series, I’m influenced by medieval and Renaissance painting, the Eastern Orthodox icon tradition, and German Expressionism. The work also draws intellectually on the history of social change movements, liberation theology, and my own experience within the poor people’s movement. Future directions for this series may include stained glass pieces as well.

I’m also broadly interested in portraiture and the figure, and I’m fascinated and delighted by color.