
Yaddo Series: Old Birch Tree
1979 · Watercolor on off-white wove paper
152.5 × 111.5 cm (60 1/16 × 43 15/16 in.)
Art Institute of Chicago

Patricia Tobacco Forrester is an American painter whose work spans abstraction and figuration, often incorporating gestural mark-making and layered color fields that respond to landscape and memory. Born in 1940, her practice developed across multiple decades of sustained formal investigation into the relationship between surface, transparency, and spatial illusion. Her paintings employ oil and acrylic across large canvases, building atmospheric depth through controlled application and strategic restraint. Forrester's work demonstrates a commitment to the materiality of paint itself as both subject and vehicle.
Source: Aic · Trust score: 85% · Updated 1mo ago