PAM BURNLEY-SCHOL NESTED MEMORY
October 18 – November 29, 2025
Artist Reception: Saturday, October 18, 2025 from 5 – 8 pm
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, Denton, Texas
For thirty years PDNB Gallery has specialized in showcasing photo-based art. Occasionally the gallery has presented exhibitions of painting, sculpture, ceramics and works on paper. This month PDNB is presenting a solo show for painter, Pam Burnley-Schol.
This will be the second exhibition at PDNB for Pam Burnley-Schol. Her first was a two-person exhibition with her husband, Don Schol, in 2022.
Most of Pam's paintings in this show will have the foundation of gold leaf, a signature of her work. She is a figurative painter, working in the still life genre.
Pam describes her still life paintings as “secular Icons” where ordinary things from nature become intensified in meaning. She paints objects such as bird nests, fruit, flowers and shells in oil in a field of gold. The common objects transform into treasured items that inspire awe when surrounded by 23k gold, as found in traditional liturgical art.
Since the recent loss of her husband, her painting has assisted her in the mourning process. A lengthy process for anyone, but nonetheless a period of soul searching when faced with a canvas and paint.
Most of her new icon paintings measure 16 x 16 inches. Pam uses a Renaissance period technique, pastiglia, to decorate the four corners of the paintings which build up the surface for gilding. The objects she chooses to paint are now more meaningful, connected to her loss. The map of Vietnam refers to Don's service in the war as a combat artist. His baseball glove surrounded by butterflies, a stack of fragile heirloom teacups that could fall with a whisper.
Two large paintings in this show (50 x 50 inches) were the first she completed after Don's passing. Promise holds dreams and stories of meeting her husband in the Milky Way, revealing a deep blue velvet dress that is set in the stars, an homage to Marc Chagall’s painting of himself and his wife flying over their Russian village. The Milky Way is painted meticulously, centering the Fibonacci sequence of the spiral on heart’s location of the dress.
There will be fourteen paintings in this solo exhibition. It might be said that there will be gold in the basement of the Wells Fargo Bank Building…PDNB's new gallery location in Denton, Texas!
For press images: allison@pdnbgallery.com
Form more information: missy@pdnbgallery.com
