Patrick Mitchell

Patrick sees drawing and painting as a means of acting on his daily experience; his practice is an ongoing enquiry of drawing subjects that have personal meaning; his own head, friends and family, landscapes he spends a lot of time in. He works from the same subjects, over and over, because they are constantly changing; and because he is also constantly changing, his own mental state and handling of materials: the difference that a pencil stub versus a longer pencil makes to the graphic quality and ‘character’ of a drawing for instance. His painting feeds off his drawing and vice versa; but both are about trying to work through the form of the subject in an abandoned way and ending up with something that is somehow cohesive and spontaneous and has a likeness to the subject.   

The work in the show includes self-portrait drawings of his own head in profile, drawings of a tree in his front garden, and oranges in his workspace. All the were made in a sketchbook and are the same size; some of them were quite laborious, taking thirty or forty minutes; all the drawings were made in the last few weeks but are not displayed in the order they were made. Patrick only keeps the drawings that he feels work and have something that previous drawings of the same subject lack, so every drawing on show represents some kind of ‘revelation’. The same applies for the paintings; but painting is more difficult, because colour is involved, hence why they’re are much fewer in the show.