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The Marshall~LeKAE Gallery is pleased to announce an upcoming art exhibit by Los Angeles based artist Pat Berger, whose poignant paintings of homelessness have raised awareness and consciousness about this avoided topic. This art show was originally inspired by Pat’s visit to a food and shelter outreach in LA around 1985. This experience was followed by at least five years of activism, interacting and getting to know her subject, which then transpired into a series of 35 paintings and lithographs intended to spread knowledge and hopefully influence action to be taken to encourage change for this worldwide problem.

Pat Berger’s paintings depicting the crisis of homelessness in our society are formally straightforward and uncompromising works. These pieces are not only beautifully done in a technical sense, but also speak loudly on the subject manner at hand. With these paintings, Berger points to the callousness and disregard that we, as a society, have developed towards the people experiencing struggle and/or poverty. The support, protection and care that a community affords is often blotted out in the homeless experience by the alienation, hopelessness and dehumanization wrought by life on the streets.

Twelve of Berger’s paintings are now in the permanent collection of the Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum in Buffalo, other paintings are in the permanent collection of LA’s Skirball Cultural Center. Her work has also been in a number of documentaries including the Emmy award winning “Trouble in Paradise.”