Patricia Elizabeth DeCaro

Patricia Elizabeth DeCaro, beloved member of the Seattle arts community, passed away on April 6, 2025, at the age of 73 in Seattle WA. Born in Philadelphia PA, on June 30, 1951, Pat’s life was devoted to art from an early age. She attended the Fleisher Memorial Art School and received recognition in the Gimbels City-wide Young Artists Exhibit at the age of sixteen. Pat studied art at Temple University and Tyler School of Art, both in Philadelphia, and moved to Seattle to earn a Masters degree in Fine Arts at the University of Washington. She received a Fulbright Fellowship to Italy, and spent two years there before returning to Seattle. She has lived in the Pacific Northwest since 1980, where her works are held in the collections of the Museum of Northwest Art, the Washington State Arts Commission, the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture, and the Pilchuck Glass School.

Pat DeCaro’s work has been exhibited in numerous solo and group shows in the United States and Europe. She showed her work regularly at the Francine Seders Gallery in Seattle from 1990 until the gallery closed in 2013. She had solo exhibits of her paintings and drawings in Dusseldorf, Paris, and Milan, and exhibited a co-created video in Istanbul. She was an artist-in-residence at the MacDowell Colony, Ragdale, Ateliers Höherwegs, and the Brandywine Workshop, and held a Hauberg Fellowship residency at Pilchuck Glass School. In the Pacific Northwest, she exhibited her work at the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center and the Northwest Museum of Art, and had a solo exhibit at Gallery 4Culture in Seattle in 2016. Pat received the 2012 Twining Humber Award for lifetime achievement in the arts.

Pat will be remembered not only for her remarkable artwork and her professional achievements but also for her generosity, honesty, humor, and commitment to her friends. Her love of Italy will also be remembered: from her Fulbright years in Milan through her many trips back to Italy to visit friends, including during her last illness, Pat considered Italy her second home. Pat is survived by the family of loving friends she built around herself, from her youth through her years in Italy, as a teacher, and as a vibrant member of the arts community. If you have special memories of Pat that you’d like to share, you can upload them to this site, or send them to Kathy Brown (kfrugebrown@yahoo.com) for inclusion in a memorial celebration.

Plans for the memorial will be shared on this site, and a link is provided if you wish to be notified when those are finalized. Should friends wish, contributions may be made to the Fleishman Art Memorial; please include a note that the donation is made in memory of Patricia DeCaro.