Bio - Patrivia Davis

Patricia Davis lives, gardens and paints in Oakland, CA, in a healing green oasis near Lake Merrit, with its tidal estuary waters, open skies and great flocks of marine birds. Nature sustains and nourishes her as always and makes possible art that seeks to knit together her fractured self.

When the puzzle pieces of a life are merely tragic, people tend to be supportive. But when the emerging picture is also ugly and shocking, support can turn to disbelief, denial and aversion and the survivor can find herself invalidated and isolated. But an artist’s brush can show surreal symbols of a sometimes violent and exploited past. Rendering trauma into objects and textures isolates and disempowers it, imprisoning its toxins in beauty.

Not all victims of trafficking are found in the 3rd world, though you’d never know it to listen to most activists. Among us walk the survivors of home-grown systematized abuse, some of it taxpayer-funded and all of it deeply covert and denied. Our narratives are unwanted because they mar the glossy fake veneer of American life and if believed would make complacency criminal. In images and stories the truth will eventually emerge and our narrative will be heard, even if unwillingly, by the sleepwalking masses.