1977 – Bloomfield Hills, Michigan
A professional international portrait painter, Ms. Burnett’s commissions include Indira Ghandi, Lady Margaret Thatcher, Betty Ford, Governor William Milliken, Congresswoman Martha Griffiths, Marlo Thomas, Benson Ford, Betty Freidan, Corazon Aquino, Mayor Dennis Archer, Max Fisher, Barbara Walters, Senator Margaret Chase Smith, Chief Justice Helen Neis, authors Joyce Carol Oates and Kate Millett, Michelle Engler and her triplets and many others. She has had forty-four one-woman shows and has received many awards. Ms. Burnett is one of the eleven members of the Council of Leading American Portrait Painters. She founded the National Organization for Women Michigan chapter and served on the NOW national board, becoming president of NOW International. As president of the World Feminist Commission, she was invited to China and the USSR as a special guest five times. Patricia Burnett served on Detroit’s City Planning Commission, Human Rights Commission and Library Commission. She was president of the Michigan Women’s Commission and president of the National Association of Commissions for Women. Honors include Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Art and Who’s Who in American Politics. She was chosen Michigan Woman of the Year, elected to the Ohio and Michigan Halls of Fame and was named BPW’s Distinguished Woman of the Year and NOW’s Feminist of the Year. Ms. Burnett is a speaker on the arts, women and human relations and an international speaker for the U.S. Department of State. She is married to Robert Siler, a food industry management consultant. In 1999 she created a scholarship fund on the Midland campus to assist a mature woman with financial need to complete her college degree.
