Feature Articles


May Issue 2001

Patricia Madison Lusk Opens Gallery in Charleston, SC's FQ

by Linda Annas Ferguson

Since moving away at age six, Charleston-born artist Patricia Madison Lusk has returned to her beloved city. Her new Gallery is located at 40 Broad Street in the French Quarter art district between Church and State Street in Charleston, SC. With her, she not only brings her love of the Lowcountry, but the recognition she has earned as an art educator and her reputation as a fine artist.

Best known for her oils and acrylics of sea island landscapes, Lusk's scope reaches beyond the ordinary. She loves to paint seemingly everyday subjects, but approaches them in unusual ways. Her diverse repertoire often includes colorful Koi fish, a slight girl leaning on a rail by the ocean, or a young snowy white egret disturbing its own refection in the waters of the Ace Basin.

A colorist, Lusk is fascinated by how the bright light makes the colors more vibrant and how muted light softens the color to almost a whisper. A painter of both, Lusk adds, "Sometimes we need to shout out loud or just be quiet."

Design and composition are important to Lusk. Her large format color-filled images capture the many moods of the marsh. She shares, "I am not just painting a scene, but am more interested in how those shapes relate to one another. I love the contrast of light and dark and the emotions it evokes from the viewer.

Although Lusk has just recently returned to Charleston, she has not been far from home. After receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of South Carolina. and completing post-graduate work and teacher's certification at Furman University. she continued to live in SC. From 1984 to the present she has been an artist-in-resident for the state of SC through the SC Arts Commission, where she has worked with art teachers and gifted and talented students around the state.

In 1987, she served as President of the SC Watercolor Society and in 1992 served as the president of the Jacksonville, Florida Watercolor Society and is included in Who's Who In American Art and Who's Who in South and Southeastern Art.

She lived in Hilton Head for 16 years where she served as Executive Director of the Stratford College of Fine Arts. During that time she also owned and operated the gallery, The Silver Palm. Her work has been exhibited in museums around the US including the Salmagundi Club in New York and the Headley-Whitney Museum in Louisville, KY. She has shown in many one-woman shows and received honors in numerous juried exhibits. Her works hang in corporate and private collections around the country and abroad. She also shows at the Red Piano Gallery in Hilton Head, SC.

For further information check our SC Commercial Gallery listings or call the gallery at 843/723-9832.

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