Patricia McParlin

Patricia McParlin is an award winning British artist who lives and works in Wales. She studied at The University of Wales and The West Wales School of the Arts. She has recently been selected as a member of The Royal Cambrian Academy.

Primarily a painter, she has also worked as a musician, writer and theatre practitioner.

She has exhibited widely and her work has been purchased by corporate and individual collectors, both nationally and internationally.

Artist Statement

I am interested in the power art has to transgress boundaries. It can be in, (at least), two places at once; inner and outer, real and imagined, present and past.

It offers an instant synthesis of thought and emotion, challenging divisions between what is seen and imagined, observed and remembered. An expression both literal and metaphorical in the same moment.

'I partly see my art as a form of visual poetic, or static music….the impulse to transform…to harmonise discords…walking the line in-between beauty and brutality…the bitter sweet…'

I am currently concerned with the physicality of painting; colour, form, space, texture and the alchemy that can arise from a response to materials.

She sees these pieces as being part of the same process as painting in the visual selection of colour, form, texture and composition within a given space. As with painting she is very concerned to work with what is integral to the materials, responding to their unique properties within the making process. Each piece is individually conceived and hand made using copper recycled from discarded water tanks, piping and electrical wiring. The pieces are inspired by nature in general, but particularly the gaunt and graceful shapes of the gorse and other native plants in the hedgerows and coastlines of West Wales.

She also is drawn to the forms and spirit of birch trees: the pieces are often pierced and etched in response to the marks found on their trunks. The Celtic tradition is also a strong influence, in the use of Welsh slate and in the spiralling and twisting forms in the work.