Patricia Holbrook
HAC Member Since: 0
People are fascinating. Seeing a man in deep thought hunched over a cup of coffee at a restaurant counter, or a girl riding a mechanical bull at a honky-tonk bar, these are the subjects that send me sprinting to my easel.My goal in painting is to take a simple piece of white paper and, with mere paint and brushes, convey the feeling and atmosphere of something I have experienced or imagined. Before retiring to Eureka, I worked for the Walt Disney Co. in the Figure Finishing Department, working on props and animated figures for Disneyland and Walt Disney World. I painted everything from life-sized alligators, giant dancing flowers, Seven Dwarfs and Jiminy Crickets, to swashbuckling pirates. You had to be able to do other things too, besides wield a brush. Whether sewing sequins on gowns for dancing vegetables or feathering chickens for the Pirates of the Caribbean, I never knew what my next assignment would be. One time, alone in a large dark sound stage, painting in blacklight on the animation figure of a Roman Emperor, an audio-animator sneaked in and turned it on. I'm glad I wasn't on a ladder. Now I enjoy creating art pieces in my serene studio where nothing moves, except my brush and my imagination.
