Welcome to Pat Tolle Artwork

Oil painting has been my medium since the 1970s. Told to work in my own style after art school, I’ve had studios in California, Hawaii and Washington. I use traditional methods to paint with medium in a lean to thick pigment ratio. Color gives me visual pleasure as combinations charge the challenge of the pictorial composition.

Work is done mostly in series and informed by my environment: “women with cars” from Kauai days of co-running a repair garage; pools and reflections of swimmers from memory; landscapes from travels around PNW, including helicopters over the Palouse and Skagit tulip fields, as well as sketching trips throughout the Americas and Europe. Paintings are based on my physical and personal reality but are not photo-realistic. They share common painterly brushstroke/marks which I compare to visual songs I am singing while witnessing life around me.

My paintings are in public and private collections. I’ve exhibited in several states, including California, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, Montana, Colorado and New York.