The Polar Bear Painting

"The hands of the dead have touched the doorknobs we turn, dust from lives once lived rest in the crevices of our floorboards, those who have passed have spoken to us in dreams." Patrick Stromme (1989) received his MFA from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee and his BFA from the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh. He specializes in drawing and painting. Elements of traditional figuration are coupled with abstraction and paint materiality. Stromme explores themes of ghosts, movement, surface, and time. Stromme’s work reminds us that haunted houses do exist and ghosts can reach out through space and touch us. When Patrick was young, the Stromme family took residence in a home that originally served as a doctor's post when it was built back in 1908. Growing up, he found medical kits, journals, and otherworldly reminders of the home's past life.