Patricia Ridenour is a Seattle native. She grew up in rural Seattle where her playground was nature. The community around her were artists of various disciplines. This allowed her to learn hands on multiple disaplines from leading artists. Poetry, painting, nature constrcutions, weaving, print making, music, obsessive drawing, and performance art were some ofher favorites.

Her architect father designed Morris Graves Seattle house, along with the first glass bank building which was featured in Time Magazine. Her mother was a classical musician that sang, played piano, cello, harpsicord, and recorder.

 Ridenour studied violin and viola as a child from Seattle Symphony first chair violinist David Soter from 1965-1970 and received a scholarship to Cornish College of the Arts to study music and pre form to audiences at the age of 13.  Artist Hella Skowronski whose innovative weaving is in the collections of MoMa and the Chicago Art Museum was a member of her family. Skowronski instructed her in weaving and surface design, while supporting her other art interests.

Throughout middle school and high school she studied art and photography and received a first place award from the Seattle School district in her senior year for photography.  

After high school Patricia became a fashion and textile designer. Her studio was on Broadway Capital Hill. She held fashion shows at The Four Season's hotel that were sponsored by ACT Theatre. Ridenour contributed editorial opinions concerning the direction of fashion in various papers including the Seattle Times.

In her early twenties she returned to photography, turning her fashion studio into a photography studio and began to once again explore art from a photographic perspective.

Her photographic career has been extensive, including international awards, grants, collections, publications, and exhibitions. Ridenour was faculty at The Photo Center NW for 21 years, where she developed their digital program, created curriculum, along with other achievements for the school.

Ridenour considers herself an artist first with photography a specialty within that context. Because of this her photographic work is often mixed with other media such as encaustic, oil paint, epoxy, writing, and mounted on various materials.