Camille Patha (1938–2023) was a fearless and exuberant painter whose career spanned more than six decades. Born Darlene Camille Taylor in Seattle, Washington, she spent her early years in West Seattle, where her creative impulses were nurtured by her mother, who handed her crayons and colored pencils to keep her occupied for hours. That early encouragement bloomed into a lifelong devotion to artmaking, one fueled by bold color, personal exploration, and an unwavering commitment to self-expression.

Patha studied painting at Arizona State University before transferring to the University of Washington, where she earned both her BFA and MFA. Early in her education, she struggled with the institutional pressure to adopt a muted palette aligned with the Northwest School's spiritual restraint. But Patha quickly rejected that subdued aesthetic, embracing vivid color and expressive form as tools of emotional liberation and personal truth. “Color began oozing out of my ears,” she once recalled. “Color makes a statement about freedom, about humanity.” That statement would remain the throughline of her work for the rest of her life.

From the 1960s onward, Patha exhibited extensively, including at the Seattle Art Museum, Bellevue Art Museum, and Tacoma Art Museum. Her large-scale abstraction Space Game was featured in the Washington State Pavilion at Expo ’70 in Osaka, Japan. She was represented by several of Seattle’s major galleries, including Otto Seligman, Gordon Woodside, and Davidson Contemporary, and became known for paintings that move fluidly between surrealism, feminist iconography, environmentalism, and pure abstraction. Her work defied classification, constantly evolving as she embraced new styles and ideas. Whether creating hallucinatory landscapes or ecstatic color fields, Patha imbued every surface with the urgency and vitality of lived experience.

In a male-dominated art world, Patha subverted expectations and often signed her early work “D. C. Patha” to mask her gender. She famously recalled a moment when a viewer, surprised to learn she was a woman, told her, “But you paint like a man.” Her retort: “No, I don’t. I paint like a painter.”

Her commitment to self-definition extended into activism and community building. She served on the King County Arts Commission and co-founded multiple civic organizations and arts foundations in the Seattle area. She was also a long-time member of the Seattle Yacht Club, where she and her husband John shared a love of sailing and entertaining.

Patha’s paintings are held in numerous public and private collections, including those of the Tacoma Art Museum, Bellevue Art Museum, Boeing Company, University of Washington, the U.S. State Department’s Art in Embassies Program, and the Jon and Mary Shirley Collection. In later years, she expanded her practice to include sculpture and furniture design, remaining fiercely productive into her eighties. Her final works explored female sensuality with characteristic boldness and humor, reaffirming her commitment to radical honesty and embodied experience.

Flamboyant in personality and wardrobe, Patha was as much a force socially as she was in the studio. She brought her signature color palette to every room she entered—neon oranges, fuchsias, acid greens—and was known for her generosity, magnetic charm, and unstoppable creative energy. “I remain on a road of continued discovery,” she once wrote. “Striving for a purer art form.” Camille Patha passed away in December 2023, leaving behind a legacy of vibrant, uncompromising work that continues to inspire and electrify.

Solo Exhibitions

• 2023: Camille Patha: Passion Pleasure Power, Tacoma Art Museum

• 2017: Three Female Artists, Museum of Northwest Art

• 2014: A Punch of Color: Fifty Years of Painting, Tacoma Art Museum

• 2014: Irascible, Davidson Galleries, Seattle

• 2011: Forever Forward, Davidson Galleries, Seattle

• 2009: Davidson Galleries, Seattle

• 2008: Davidson Contemporary, Seattle

• 2007: Yella Thrilla, Davidson Galleries, Seattle

• 2006: Solo Exhibition, Davidson Galleries, Seattle

• 2006: Highline Community College, Des Moines, WA

• 2004: White Bird Gallery, Cannon Beach, OR

• 2000: Foster White Gallery, Seattle

• 1995: Foster White Gallery, Kirkland

• 1994: Southwest King County Chambers, Tukwila

• 1989: Foster/White Gallery, Kirkland

• 1988: Foster/White Gallery at Frederick & Nelson, Seattle

• 1985: Foster/White Gallery, Seattle

• 1983: Gordon Woodside/John Braseth Gallery, Seattle

• 1981: Gordon Woodside/John Braseth Gallery, Seattle

• 1980: Gordon Woodside Gallery, Seattle

• 1979: A Decade, 1968–1978, Bellevue Art Museum (curated by John Olbrantz)

• 1978–1975: Gordon Woodside Gallery, Seattle

• 1974: Welton Gallery, San Francisco

• 1973: Creative Arts Center, Everett, WA; Cellar Gallery, Kirkland, WA; Gordon Woodside Gallery

• 1972: Polly Friedlander Gallery, Seattle; Gail Chase Gallery, Seattle

• 1969 & 1966: Collector’s Gallery, Bellevue

• 1963: Cellar Gallery, Kirkland

Group Exhibitions

• 2017: Museum of Northwest Art, La Conner, WA

• 2007–2008: Jundt Art Museum, Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA

• 2007: Museum of Northwest Art (MONA), La Conner, WA

• 1985: Bumberbiennale: Seattle Painting 1925–1985, Bumbershoot, Seattle

• 1984: Foster/White Gallery at Frederick & Nelson, Seattle

• 1982: Northwest Women in Art, Calyx International, Portland, OR

• 1976: Pacific Northwest Arts Council Gallery, Seattle; Anacortes Art Gallery, WA

• 1976: Fifth Annual Federal Way Arts Festival, WA (Featured Artist)

• 1975: Bicentennial Invitation, Charles M. Russell Museum, MT; PNW Arts and Crafts Fair, Bellevue

• 1973: White Whale Gallery, Gig Harbor, WA

• 1972: Women in Art: Survivors ’72, Henry Art Gallery, UW Seattle

• 1971: Expo ’70 in Review, Jade Gallery, Richland, WA

• 1971: 57th Annual Exhibition of Northwest Artists, Seattle Art Museum

• 1970: Three Artists, Collector’s Gallery, Bellevue

• 1970: Young Artists of Washington, Tacoma Art Museum

• 1970: Washington State Artists, Expo ’70, Osaka World’s Fair

• 1970: Collector’s Gallery, Kirkland

• 1970: 56th Annual Exhibition of Northwest Artists, Seattle Art Museum

• 1968: A Painter and a Sculptor: Camille Patha and Doris Chase, Collector’s Gallery, Bellevue

• 1968: Five Washington Artists, Bau-Xi Gallery, Vancouver, BC

• 1968: Collector’s Gallery, Kirkland

• 1968: 54th Annual Exhibition of Northwest Artists, Seattle Art Museum

• 1967: PNW Arts and Crafts Fair, Bellevue (Invitational); Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, BC (Invitational); First Waterfront Show, Everett

• 1966: University Unitarian Church, Seattle (Invitational); 52nd Annual Exhibition, Seattle Art Museum

• 1965: Masters of Fine Arts, Henry Art Gallery, UW Seattle

• 1965: Two Young Painters, Otto Seligman Gallery, Seattle

• 1965: 51st Annual Exhibition, Seattle Art Museum

• 1965: The Bon Marché National Gallery, Seattle

• 1964: 50th Annual Exhibition of Northwest Artists, Seattle Art Museum

I find the convoluted complexities of life in the twenty-first century very interesting and think they are well worth paying attention to in painting. With all its seductions, vulnerabilities, and sometimes treacherous outcomes, this is Life’s journey, and it is intriguing. In these newest paintings, I am using a close relationship of figure to ground because I find that this lets me convey hints of the structured energy that is so necessary for coping with life. That energy is depicted through the juxtapositioning of elements, structured clusters, myriad tiny details, and an array of intense colors and complex visual information across the expanse of the canvas groups and clusters that are themselves all intertwined and complicated.

I read the canvas left to right: from the beginning to the middle and then to the final inevitable conclusion. I use the purest abstract form because, as with music, it allows the work to reach the largest number of people in the most personal ways.

Coming from the roots of American abstraction, my recent works are complicated, intricate color definitions, dialogues of color and shape that belie my personal dark vision. Yet my new work is not gestural abstraction, as in American art of the 1950s and ’60s but a refined and thoughtful language, carefully painted with sharp, clean edges, and includes delicate transparencies as thin as the wisp of a hummingbird’s breath.

I remain engaged, though detached. My works are neither politically driven nor intended as narratives. Each is a focus of light through my inner persona. And although figurative imagery may be absent, emotional intimacy is present and very important to each work. I remain on a road of continued discovery, striving for a purer art form.