Collection: Patsy Krebs

California based artist Patsy Krebs was born in Oakland and lives in works Inverness, California. She received her MFA from Claremont Graduate School.

“She is nationally known for her abstract minimal prints and paintings in watercolor and acrylic. In 2011 Ms. Krebs worked with Master Printer Susan Oehme at Oehme Graphics (OG) in Steamboat Springs, CO to create a series of aquatints and etchings currently being exhibited at ebo Gallery.  In these works, she applies a ground color on the wood panel, upon which she layers numerous coats of thinned acrylic washes in both horizontal and vertical bands, creating exquisite, ethereal gradations of color.  For Krebs, these works reflect a kind of meditation on time.  The central image boldly asserts the present, while repetitive, yet diminishing edges suggest the haze that characterizes our perception of the past and previous generations.  Krebs’ palette is restricted, drawing attention to the interaction of various shades of black, gray and white with selected colors, namely hues of red and orange.  Her use of the rectangle in these paintings formally resonates with oriental carpets and other textiles that employ complex central-image color-field compositions, in addition to recalling eastern orthodox icon painting and other icon-like images that exude a kind of interior light.  By presenting these paintings at a small, intimate scale, she encourages contemplative, individual encounters with the works, as viewers investigate her subtle treatment of line, form and color.

She has been featured in publications and newspapers such as Art in America, ARTnews, San Francisco Chronicle and Los Angeles Times.

In 2010, she was awarded a Pollack-Krasner Foundation Artist’s Grant. Krebs has taught extensively at art schools throughout California and currently teaches at Dominican University of California.

Ms. Krebs’ suites of subtly varied prints, while starkly minimal, exude a contemplative intelligence and emotion.  In the two series’ Since Brass and Redwing there is sense of timelessness communicated through her primer-like use of line, and formal structure.” Steamboat Springs Arts Council

“I am more and more aware of the importance of “right measure”, not in any sense of limitation, but in the ancient sense; that particular measure of things that releases their inherent beauty, or liveliness.” Patsy Krebs

Her work resides in both private and public collections including Denver Art Museum, the Achenbach Foundation, San Francisco; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Norton Museum in West Palm Beach, Florida; and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.

She is a recipient of the Pollack-Krasner Award and The National Endowment for the Arts Grant