exhibitions

Opening 6PM Thursday 15 October

15 October- 15 November

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STUDIO OPEN

WEEKENDS 10AM - 2PM

or by appointment

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ARTIST STATEMENT​​

Patricia is a painter who divides her time between Beechworth and Sydney, working primarily in oil and, more recently, acrylic.

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She came to painting in 2012, picking up brushes left over from one of her children's art projects. Having trained as a jewellery designer at Randwick TAFE, where she completed an Associate Diploma in 1992, she found oil paint suited the demands of raising young children in a way jewellery-making no longer could. Unlike a half-finished piece of jewellery, an oil painting could be left for hours or days and easily picked up again. Her first painting was painted not with a brush but with a stick from the garden, and she has continued to work across a range of tools since, using brushes to achieve subtleties of tone and colour, and palette knife where she wants to draw out the structure and grain. She also paints on salvaged material such as wood panelling or packaging.

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From 2017 to 2020, Patricia studied at the Julia Ashton School of Art, an unstructured, self-directed school of long standing in Sydney's art community. She has also exhibited with the Artists of Ashfield, a group run by Ashfield Council, showing twice in their annual exhibition, and with FRANS, a charity exhibition and sale.

Patricia's paintings begin with a real place; landscape, water, and urban scenes, often drawn from photographs taken while travelling. Some works render a scene as immediately recognisable; others bring several images together as a montage, reflecting the way a place is often remembered less as a single view than as a jumble of impressions, allowing landscape and architectural elements to be composed deliberately within the one work. Alongside this, botanical subjects recur throughout her practice, rendered sometimes literally and sometimes abstracted, though always grounded in the real form of the plant. A particular skill of hers lies in the blending of colour, especially in her skies and water. Her interest extends still life, and example included in this exhibition, with a single flower used as a study in colour and texture.

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Her practice deepened once her children left school and she was able to give painting her full attention. During Sydney's 2020–2021 lockdowns, with time to concentrate and few distractions, her process changed markedly. Works that had once taken six to twelve months to complete began to take shape in a matter of days.

 

Exhibition Intention

 

We acknowledge the original custodians of these lands. The people of the rivers and the hills have walked these lands for thousands of years as well as today, and we pay respects to the elders of the past, present and emerging.

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Looking for Light is a body of work painted in 2020–2021, during Sydney's COVID-19 lockdowns.

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It was a strange and difficult time for our family, for our community, for the world. Woodstock Runners, the club I've trained and run with since 2013, had to stop all its training and races. For many of us, running had always been as much about each other as the running itself; the Thursday trackwork, Saturday ParkRun, the Sunday long runs, the conversations before and after. When that stopped, the loss of that connection affected us all differently.

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One our running friends was Steve, a quiet regular at training and running events, often with a camera in hand. In the isolation of lockdown, without the routines and company that had held us together, we lost him. His death is what inspired this body of work.

After hearing about Steve, I wanted to do something; to help, and to raise awareness around mental health. So every day through lockdown, I laid my paints and brushes out on the kitchen bench, moved my easel into the light, and painted.

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Thank you to Kate O'Toole, for her kindness and friendship, and for working alongside me to make this exhibition possible. Thank you to my husband Alan, who is always there to help, listen, and support me in my art. And thank you to my son Ethan and my daughter Ginger. These works were made during a tough couple of years, but we did it.

All proceeds from this exhibition go to mental health charities, in memory of Steve.