Biography

Patti Trimble has worked as a NPS Naturalist; exhibiting painter, science writer for Macmillan McGraw-Hill et al; freelance arts writer; and performance poet. She studied science at UC Berkeley, earned an MFA in painting from Hunter Graduate Program, and most of her art education was as studio assistant for ten years as a young artist for (much-older) first-generation NY abstract expressionists. Awards for her work include finalist for a painting award from the American Institute of Arts and Letters, a Djerassi Foundation Residency, grants from Lannan Foundation and Poets&Writers, and a Pushcart nomination. 

A lifelong theme of her work, in both painting and poetry, has been the human experience, specifically related to wild places and the inexplicable connection between humans, landscape, and wild mind. Patti was an abstract painter in the 1980s, exhibiting in New York. In the mid-90s she returned to California and found a unique poetic voice, speaking poems with many fine musicians. Often expressing environmental concerns and a love of nature, Patti co-created the Tuolumne Poetry Festival in Yosemite and performed spoken-word in the USA and Europe. Her poems, texts, and images have been published in anthologies, journals, theater performances, and recordings. Currently she is working on a manuscript about her ab-ex mentors and eco-philosophy.

In the painting studio, Patti is thinking about post-human presence on the planet, inviting images and memories and absurdities that speak sideways. This practice—the painterly engagement with materials—is humbling and mysterious—as the will and intelligence of inert materials and the collective mind is always surprising and cannot be explained.