ABOUT THE ARTIST
Patricia Freeman-Martin
Born in Caldwell, Idaho in 1961, Patricia was raised in a ranching and rodeo family in Eastern Oregon graduating from high school in Pendleton, Oregon. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts, magna cum laude, from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. She studied photography and creative writing in school, but emerged from art school ready to paint. She moved to New York City and spent nearly five years in the East Village. When she wasn’t working to pay the rent, she was painting and haunting the art museums and galleries of Manhattan.
During a visit home to Eastern Oregon in 1987, she fell in love with a potato farmer from Southern Idaho and never returned to New York. Her marriage to Gary Martin gave her the opportunity to return to western life. For 16 years, Patricia and her family lived and worked on their ranch at the foot of the Elkhorn Mountains in North Powder, Oregon. Ranching and cutting horses have been an integral part of her life as well as inspiration for her art.
In 2004, Patricia and her family purchased a small ranch/horse facility in Terrebonne, Oregon very near Smith Rock. While her husband Gary manages his business Northwest Mare Services, Patricia divides her time between being a mother to their son Miguel, showing cutting horses, and painting.
Patricia has woven together a beautiful and complex life of many different themes; cattle ranching, cutting horses, family, and art. She has created a body of art work which presents western subjects and themes painted in a style which reflects her fresh, honest and whimsical way of viewing the world.