Fermata

Planthouse Gallery
526 West 26th Street
New York, NY
June 11 – July 29, 2026

Fermata: a prolongation at the discretion of the performer of a musical note, chord, or rest beyond its given time value

also : the sign denoting such a prolongation

Fermata brings together two series of work by Anne Patterson (b. 1960) created during the Covid-19 pandemic. Time moved in different directions during this global prolongation: days bled into one another, yet the seasons asserted themselves with unusual clarity. Years on, Patterson’s work reflects this strange and quiet time for the artist, and for all of us.

The series of watercolors exhibited here were painted in response to the book Year of Wonder by Clemency Burton-Hill, which ties a piece of classical music to each day of the year. Anne Patterson sees music. Across her practice, she translates sound into color, light, and movement. Each work is a record of her synaesthetic experience, inviting the viewer to inhabit her sensory world. For Year of Wonder, Patterson kept a musical diary — painting her visions of music each day for a year. Like the logbook of an explorer on a mystical journey, it is a catalogue of a world we cannot see. Together, the 365 paintings form a vast grid that envelops the viewer: a symphony of form and color that compresses a whole year into a single moment.

Accompanying Year of Wonder is Patterson's sculpture series The Paths We Take, inspired by the nature surrounding her Rhode Island home. Around Narragansett, these common reeds punctuate the landscape, framing the river in gently swaying lines. Bowing on the shore, their stalks are strummed by the wind. Downy inflorescences shivering, their fuzzy coats catching the light off the water. Patterson collects these reeds, studying their resilient forms: stoic through wind, rain, and snow. She casts them in stainless steel, creating an armored likeness of each delicate grass. As light skates across the metal, the particularity of each plant is preserved — a lasting portrait of a natural world that bends but does not break.

For more information, contact studio@annepatterson.com