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.
|