At 84 years old, renowned abstract painter Pat Lipsky is experiencing a remarkable renaissance, returning to the vibrant color-stain techniques that first established her reputation in the late 1960s. Her latest solo exhibition "Color Next to Color" at James Fuentes Gallery in Tribeca, opening October 9th, coincides with the release of her memoir "Brightening Glance: Recollections of a New York Painter" (2025), marking a significant moment in her decades-long career dedicated to exploring color's expressive power.
Lipsky's artistic journey began with an unexpected moment of recognition in second grade during a watercolor class. When her teacher held up her work and announced to the class, "Look at Pat's beautiful colors!" it set the course for her lifelong obsession with hue and pigment. "Ruined my life!" she jokingly recalled during a recent interview in her 10th-floor New York studio, more than 70 years after that pivotal moment.
Her abstract color-field canvases are characterized by bold contrasts where different hues collide and achieve what she describes as "precarious balance." This approach is purely instinctual for Lipsky, who explained that painting involves "a magical moment when the materials suddenly come alive." Her work has been exhibited in galleries since 1968, but her paintings are now experiencing renewed attention and critical acclaim.
Many of her new works employ similar techniques to one of her most celebrated pieces, "Chrysanthemum" (1971), a large stain painting that was featured at Frieze Los Angeles 2025 and subsequently acquired by the de Young Museum. "I would give my right arm if I could do that again," Lipsky admitted, and her recent canvases suggest she's approaching that earlier mastery once more.
After completing her undergraduate studies at Cornell University, Lipsky enrolled in what was technically a one-year master's program at Hunter College, where she studied under the legendary sculptor Tony Smith, who became her mentor and profoundly influenced her artistic development. "As a teacher, he was just incredibly engaging," she recalled. "He would sit down right next to you, no matter what you were working on—even if it was the dumbest picture you ever saw—and he would just talk to you. That was so touching to me." She was so inspired by Smith's teaching that she extended her stay to four years simply to continue working with him.
During the late 1960s, Lipsky briefly explored mathematics as artistic inspiration, influenced by Frank Stella's geometric precision and Smith's fascination with geodesic domes. She began creating sketches of curves on graph paper, which resulted in three large canvases she called her "Turing paintings," named after the famous mathematician Alan Turing. These works translated the mathematics of natural patterns, such as ripples in water, into painted curves plotted across gridded fields. However, she soon abandoned this mathematical approach, and her work evolved into the gestural, sometimes explosive color-field and color-stain paintings that would define her artistic identity. The Turing works remained hidden until now, with two of the three being included in the current James Fuentes exhibition for their first public showing.
Shortly after graduating in 1968, Lipsky boldly pursued gallery representation by taking a small box of Kodachrome slides to the prestigious André Emmerich Gallery, then operated by one of New York's most influential art dealers. Despite the secretary's dismissive response that Emmerich wasn't seeing any new work, Lipsky spotted the dealer standing nearby and made a decisive move. "This was one of the great moments in my life—I just walked right past her and showed him," she remembered. The gamble paid off spectacularly: within two years, Lipsky was represented by Emmerich alongside established color-field masters like Morris Louis and Helen Frankenthaler. Her success was immediate and substantial, with 70 paintings sold in her first year alone.
Lipsky's early canvases drew significant energy from the color-stain innovations pioneered by Louis and Frankenthaler, as well as the raw intensity of Jackson Pollock's work. "Pollock was really the main influence," she acknowledged. "I was riveted by the intensity of the colors [Louis] was getting—there was something very charismatic about the work." While she admired Frankenthaler's technical innovations, their personal relationship was notably contentious. "I hated her and she hated me—she was a horrible person," Lipsky said with characteristic frankness and laughter.
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Lipsky fully embraced her natural instinct for color relationships and combinations. Works like "Winter" (1971), currently featured in the James Fuentes exhibition, showcase her mastery of stain painting techniques with its dark gradient that seamlessly bleeds from midnight blue to luxurious purple. Other significant pieces, including the polychromatic "Spring's Fireplace" (1969) and her new four-color abstraction "Emanate" (2025), demonstrate her enduring fascination with color contrast that has remained consistent throughout her career.
Lipsky's creative process is entirely intuitive and deliberately non-theoretical. "I have no interest or belief in color theory," she explained emphatically. "I approached painting in a Freudian way. I just free associate. You don't tell the painting what to do. You're with the painting, and painting is, in some sense, guiding you." This philosophical approach has remained central to her practice for over five decades.
While Lipsky began her career working primarily in acrylic paint, she spent several decades creating what she described as "heavy and austere works" in oil paint before becoming frustrated with what she called "oil paint syndrome." Recently, however, she has returned to the acrylic techniques that originally established her reputation, inspired partly by rediscovering some unstretched canvases from the 1970s. Her new works successfully tap into her earlier technical approach, creating color-fields that appear brilliantly iridescent.
At this stage in her career, Lipsky draws an interesting parallel between her artistic evolution and that of French novelist Gustave Flaubert. Just as Flaubert returned to the narrative techniques that made "Madame Bovary" famous in his later short story "A Simple Heart," Lipsky has deliberately returned to her earlier style. "It's exactly the style of Madame Bovary," she explained. "He went back to the style, and I deliberately went back." She refers to acrylic as "a New York paint" because it dries quickly, matching the city's fast-paced energy and rhythm.
Her recent works feature bold compositional elements, such as the massive red color-field dominating "Lost Painting" (2023). The selection of new paintings at James Fuentes Gallery creates a clear throughline across her entire career, demonstrating both consistency and evolution. "Dream" (2024), with its horizontal bands of turquoise, purple, midnight blue, and red, delivers the same immediacy and urgency that characterized her younger years. Meanwhile, "Emanate" (2025) features delicate pastel bands that appear to float gently across raw canvas, creating effects that are simultaneously soft and insistent, reminiscent of her earliest works where rivulets of color bled organically outward across the surface.
Reflecting on her early artistic breakthroughs, Lipsky recalled the exhilaration of those formative years. "It was tremendously exciting to do. I was flying," she said with evident nostalgia. Today, at 84, she's successfully tapping back into that same sensation with unmistakable joy and renewed creative energy, proving that artistic passion and innovation need not diminish with age.
