Patrick Schmidt’s life in the arts began early and broadly. Music, dance, theater, writing, and visual art all competed for his attention, but it was painting—and more specifically abstraction—that ultimately claimed him. In abstraction, he found a way to communicate ideas and emotions without the limits of recognizable objects, allowing thought and feeling to exist on the canvas in their most direct form.

His early mature work explored identity through pattern. Drawing inspiration from the Pattern and Decoration movement of the 1970s, Patrick began collecting wallpaper and fabric designs, layering and juxtaposing them as a way of visually mapping how he understood himself. When he gained access to digital photo-manipulation tools, he transformed hundreds of these patterns into a new vocabulary of shape, color, and crisp edges, building compositions that merged the tactile with the technological.

During the pandemic, Patrick returned to this digital archive, reworking earlier imagery to uncover new structures and color relationships. These explorations led to his current body of work: hard-edged geometric paintings punctuated by subtly political color choices and “false transparency,” often in the form of circles rooted in both geometric abstraction and the Buddhist concept of the Dharma Wheel—a symbol of focus and mindful meditation. More recently, he has begun to disrupt these precise systems with elements of graffiti and tagging, introducing another layer of voice and tension within the ordered framework.

Alongside his studio practice, Patrick has shaped generations of artists as a Professor of Art at Washington & Jefferson College, where he has taught painting, drawing, and design for more than twenty years. His work has been exhibited internationally, with shows in Los Angeles, New York City, Washington, DC, Kansas City, Florence and Cosenza in Italy, and Budapest, Hungary. He is represented by 33 Contemporary in Lake Worth, Florida; Thomas Punzmann Contemporary in Frankfurt, Germany; and White Room Gallery in East Hampton, and has also shown with Baker Howard Contemporary in London and Todd Weiner Gallery in Kansas City. His career has been further enriched by residencies at Box of Contemporary Space in Cosenza, Italy; Château Orquevaux in Orquevaux, France; and Studio Faire in Nérac, France.

Through every phase of his work, Patrick continues to return to the same central pursuit: building visual spaces where identity, perception, and quiet contemplation can coexist in tension and harmony.