Elizabeth Patterson’s ethereal colored pencil drawings are of familiar places and monuments viewed through the windshield of a car — the Eiffel Tower, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Arc de Triomphe, Claiborne Avenue in New Orleans — but their defining characteristics are obfuscated by strikingly realistic veils of raindrops and streaming rivulets of water. The viewer is in the position of the car’s driver, peering through the wet glass to the blurry, shimmery lights and hazily formless shapes beyond. We are acutely aware of the juxtaposition of the interior world of the automobile and the exterior world of such recognizable civic icons. It heightens our appreciation of how this putatively mundane vantage point we occupy actually offers an enchanting and romantic experience of quiet, contemplative seeing.
