85-year-old artist creates with color, sensuality. See her new work at Tacoma Art Museum

Camille Patha’s favorite color is magenta. The purple-pink hue plays a starring role in the 85-year-old Normandy Park painter’s work. But there’s also orange, red and long flowing drapes of gold. All of them and more are on display in the artist’s latest solo show at Tacoma Art Museum.

“It’s as colorful as it can be,” Patha said of her work during an interview at a preview for the show. “A color is only a color when it’s next to another color.”

“Camille Patha: Passion Pleasure Power” opened last weekend for a six-month run. It’s the latest show in the artist’s career that began in the 1960s.

From the beginning, Patha’s work has stood out in the Northwest art world. While her mostly male peers used the region’s natural palette of greens, grays and blues on their canvases, she worked in vibrant colors in a variety of media, genre and styles.

“What I learned when I first visited Camille is that you cannot pin her down,” said TAM curator Faith Brower. “She is full of surprises.”

Color is not the only hallmark of Patha’s work, Brower said: “I quickly realized that Camille’s signature is not just her great use of color, but it’s her daring and fearless approach to painting.”

It’s just not Patha’s embrace of color that has earned her a reputation. There’s also the eroticism.

“All my work is sexual,” she readily offered. “We’re sexual, we’re alive. It’s true. As long as we stay healthy.”

An X-rating isn’t needed for the show. The erotic nature of her art might take some imagination on part of the viewer, but Patha insists it’s there.

Patha is never without an opinion or observation, even if it’s sometimes discursive or off subject:

“Color has a voice.”

“Fluorescents are the bad boys of color.”

“Get coffee. Coffee helps. It’s a drug.”

A northwestern artist

Patha was a difficult child, she explained.

“I had my own agenda,” she said. By age 4, she was a handful for her mother. “That poor woman had this little brat.”

Her mother gave her pencils, crayons and paper to keep her occupied.

“I do remember the pencil and the joy it gave me,” she said. “I was entertained for hours.”

Since then, there’s been a formal art education at the University of Washington, shows, commissions and awards. Through it all, her work has defied expectations, Brower and others say.

Brower describes Patha’s work as vibrant with a punch of color. “Punch of Color” was the title of her last exhibition at TAM in 2014.

A casual observer of Patha’s show might call her style abstract. She resists the label.

“It’s very, very literal to me,” she said. “I see the shapes and the colors and the darkness.”

Patha is primarily a painter. But mixed media works populate the exhibit including two-story high “Thrill” composed of gold painted fabric flowing like a gown down the gallery’s wall.

She’s lately been painting and drawing pastels on matte black canvases. It makes the colors she uses stand out, she said.

A pastel work, “Four Days of August”, could be a distant nebula. Or an up close view of a jellyfish. Presented with these interpretations Patha simply responded, “Interesting.”

She’s not fond of the colorful dust that pastels leave behind in her studio.

“A doctor one time said, ‘The bottom of your foot is green’,” she recalled. “I was working last night.”

Not slowing down

She recently discovered hard rock. She admits she’s a few years behind the curve. “I missed it by 20 years, but I love it now,” she said. Her current favorite: Pearl Jam.

“I play it loudly in my car so other cars can hear it,” she said. “I’m a really bad human being.”

Her favorite snack are jelly beans. It’s probably not a coincidence they come in bright colors.

Retirement is not in Patha’s future.

“I get better every year,” she said. “Unfortunately, we all get older. I’m at the pinnacle. I just can’t stop.”

If you go

What: “Camille Patha: Passion Pleasure Power”.

Where: Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Ave. Tacoma.

When: Through Sept. 3.

Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday.

Admission: $18 adults; $15 seniors (65 +), military (active duty, reservists, veterans, and family); free for children.

Information: tacomaartmuseum.org, 253-272-4258.