Monsters, Beloveds and Invisible Whales: Patricia Bellan-Gillen
september 3, 2026 - March 07, 2027
Patricia Bellan-Gillen | Weaponed Memory/Sunny Days and False Nostalgia | Colored pencil, acrylic, on birch | 93” X 80” | 2021
opens september 3, 2026
Main gallery
Patricia Bellan-Gillen works at the border between memory and myth. Her drawings and mixed media pieces pull from personal narrative, fairytale, and pop-culture ephemera — images that feel half-remembered and half-invented, recombined into something that resists easy categorization. Monsters and beloveds recur throughout her work, but rarely stay put: a familiar shape gives way to something stranger the longer you look, and what first reads as tender can turn uncanny, or the reverse.
Bellan-Gillen describes her own aim as pursuing "a weird elegance" — work built to hold beauty and unease in the same frame, without resolving the tension between them. It's a body of work that rewards close looking rather than a quick pass, full of images that don't quite let you settle on what you're seeing. Monsters, Beloveds and Invisible Whales is on view in the Erie Art Museum's Main Gallery September 3, 2026 through March 7, 2027.
media
Q & A
with Patricia Bellan-Gillen
An interview with the artist, Patricia Bellan-Gillen.
events
OPENING RECEPTION
September 3, 2026
5-8pm
ARTIST TALK: PATRICIA BELLAN-GILLEN
October 18, 2026
2-4pm
Patricia Bellan-Gillen
artist
Patricia Bellan-Gillen was born in Fallston, PA and lives and works in rural Western Pennsylvania. She retired from Carnegie Mellon University after 29 years as a professor in the School of Art where she held the Dorothy L. Stubnitz Endowed Chair. The university honored her with the Ryan Award for Meritorious Teaching in 2000.
Bellan-Gillen’s paintings, prints and drawings have been the focus of over 50 solo exhibitions in venues in Washington DC, Nashville, TN, Houston, TX, Atlanta, GA, Las Cruces, NM, Albany, NY, Bloomington, IL, Portland, OR, Grand Rapids, MI, Chautauqua, NY, Wellington, NZ and Wimbledon/London, UK. In 2022, her solo exhibition, Words and Other Weapons was held at the McDonough Museum of Art, Youngstown, OH.
Her work has been included in numerous group shows in museums, commercial galleries, university galleries, and alternative spaces. Venues have included: Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY, Chelsea Museum of Art, New York, NY, The Art Museum at FIU, Miami, FL, Frans Masreel Centrum, Belgium, University Art Museum, Laramie, WY, Tacoma Museum of Art, Tacoma, WA and the Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Nagoya, Japan. In 2025, her large-scale drawings were featured alongside artist Karin Broker in a 2-person exhibition, Screams and Whispers, at the West Virginia University Museum of Art.
Patricia has been active in the Pittsburgh art scene since 1977 as an exhibitor, educator and mentor. In 1995, she was the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts “Pittsburgh Artist of the Year.” Bellan-Gillen is an alumnus of Edinboro University of Pennsylvania (EUP, now PennWest) where she received a B.S. in Art Education in 1973 and a B.F.A. in Printmaking in 1975. EUP named her a Distinguished Art Alumnus in 1993. She did post-graduate work at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and received an M.F.A. from Carnegie Mellon in 1979.
