Studio Tupos, the art of Pat Mills

We were married on January 27th, 1962, and by that point in his life, the fire had driven him to become a scholarship athlete had nearly been extinguished. He’d had a falling out with his coach, he’d quit the team, and had decided to stop running entirely. But the original spark still remained, and – maybe because of our relationship or maybe because the memories of his father were still vivid – he joined the Marines and began to train for the 1964 Olympics.A year and a half later, he made the team, but was regarded as a long shot to earn a medal. Instead, in what many sports writers regard as the greatest Olympic upset of all time, he won the Gold Medal in 1964 and set a new Olympic record. The following year, he followed that up with a world record in the six mile run.

   Despite marriage, athletic competitions, life in the military and three children, I earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of New Mexico. After that, I settled into a life that in nearly every way, was everything I hoped it would be. As my family grew, I helped build our family’s various businesses, including a speaker’s bureau and 10K Gold Productions, from which came the film “Running Brave” and the book, “Lessons of a Lakota,” which was co-written by Nicholas Sparks (www.nicholassparks.com), and a book in which I was responsible for the illustrations. I was active in many charities, including, “Running Strong for American Indian Youth,” a program implemented by Christian Relief Services www.indianyouth.com.

            And yet . . .
    Like Billy in 1962, when the spark to chase his dream was reignited, I felt the same spark pertaining to my own dreams on January 1, 2000. That summer, I traveled to France and spent a month in Monet’s Gardens in Giverny, reawakening a passion that had first been kindled by staring through a doorway on a Kansas prairie when I was nine years old. For years, I learned to listen to inspiration and worked on my tupos (Greek: Impression or form), discovering who I was as a painter. I had always been drawn to the abstract, and yet I could feel the influences that had shaped me: doorways and dreams, marriage and motherhood, light and shadow, Monet and Matisse. I sought to capture the movement of life in light and shadow, in vivid color, and in images that capture the imagination. By 2007, I had completed my Masters of Art at California State University, Sacramento. As you visit my website, I hope you see work that challenges you to find the doorways and dreams in your own life.