Ebony G. Patterson

Chicago, Illinois

Artworks shown are selected from works submitted by the artist in their grant or residency application. All works are copyright of the artist or artist’s estate.

About Ebony G. Patterson

Ebony Patterson, a Black woman with medium dark skin tone and short blond hair, gazes directly at camera, seated in front of a large mixed media installation. She wears a green leather jumpsuit, oversized yellow feather earring, and white sneakers.
Photo by Frank Isheman

Ebony G. Patterson (b.1981, Kingston, Jamaica) received an MFA degree in Printmaking and Drawing from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University St. Louis (2006) and a BFA in painting from Edna Manley College of Visual and Performing Arts in Kingston, Jamaica (2004). Patterson has taught at the University of Virginia; Edna Manley College School of Visual and Performing Arts; the University of Kentucky; and was the Bill and Stephanie Sick Distinguished Visiting Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her major survey exhibition ...while the dew is still on the roses... opened at Pérez Art Museum Miami in 2018; then toured to Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY (2019); and the Nasher Museum at Duke University, NC (2020). Other notable solo and group exhibitions include Thomas Cole National Historic Site, Catskills, NY; CARA, New York, NY; ICA San Francisco, CA; The Studio Museum in Harlem, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; The Brooklyn Museum, NY; Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, CA; Watershed at ICA, Boston, MA; ICA San Jose, CA; and the 2021 editions of the Liverpool and Athens Biennials. In Spring 2023, Patterson presented a major site-specific exhibition of sculptural and horticultural installations at the New York Botanical Gardens. In 2022, Patterson was appointed as the first Susan Brennan Co-Artistic Director of Prospect.6, which will take place in New Orleans in Fall 2024. Patterson has been the recipient of several awards and fellowships including the David C. Driskell Prize (2023); Tiffany Foundation Grant (2017), the United States Artist Fellowship (2018), and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant (2015). Patterson lives and works between Kingston, Jamaica and Chicago, IL.

Program Participation

Painters & Sculptors Grant, 2015

Website / Social Links

I am interested in how gardens—natural but cultivated settings—operate with social demarcations. I investigate their relationship to beauty, dress, class, race, the body, land, and death.”