Patrick Kramer (b. 1981, Kaysville, Utah) is the youngest child of German immigrants. A natural perfectionist, he found in representational painting a discipline that matched his temperament. He studied painting at Brigham Young University, earning his BFA in 2008.
Deeply interested in art history, Kramer often reimagines iconic works by pairing them with elements of destruction. His paintings explore the tension between opposites—order and chaos, grace and grit, variety and unity. The idea for his series of deconstructed masterpieces emerged while preparing a piece for a group exhibition on perfectionism. Having destroyed his own unsatisfactory works in the past, Kramer turned that frustration into a theme: illustrating the unraveling of masterworks as if undone by their creators themselves.
What began with scraped and erased imagery has evolved into depictions of burning, shattering, and cracking—moments where paintings in their already fragile states are pushed further toward collapse. In doing so, Kramer highlights the inherent fragility of art and the volatility of the creative process.
An undercurrent of memento mori runs through his work: a reminder that nothing, not even the most revered masterpieces, is permanent. From Frida Kahlo to Van Gogh, no icon is immune to his imagined decay.
“I like the polarity and juxtaposition of these images, but it’s also grace and grit—things that are beautiful but have an edge to them,” Kramer notes. “There can be beauty in ugliness.”
Kramer’s work has been featured in American Art Collector, Artists & Illustrators Magazine, and Southwest Art. He lives in Orem, Utah, with his wife and their two sons.
