PATRICK COCKLIN

Mine is a photo based painting practice.

My body of work uses the human figure as a conceit to document my contemporaries and explore aspects of painting. I make fictions plagiarized from a candid photographic memory. The subjects chronicle every day anecdotes, fleetingly glimpsed and suspended in time by the open / close of a shutter. Selected by whimsy, my brush then interprets the story on canvas. The process has no direct responsibility to a living model. I hesitate to theme the work as 'portrait'. They are conceived more in the tradition of 'ukiyo-e', the nineteenth century Japanese woodblock prints which heavily influenced the Impressionist movement. They are pictures of the floating world; floating in the Buddhist sense of something transient or evanescent, as experienced in every day life.

I use traditional materials and quote classical western art conventions to create an accessible picture. The modest scale is restrictive and enhances a personal connection with the image. They intuitively ask for attention, yet recognized relationships must be speculative ; the narrative is ambiguous yet potentially familiar. Somehow contorted and imaginary, they are neither 'real' people nor actual photographs, but allude to both. The translation in oil hinges on my interpretation of line and space and colour and balance. Viewed literally, these records may seem pedestrian or mundane. With enthusiastic colour, I expect to tease the viewer into acknowledging that these selective recollections are worthy of reflection.

I want this art to encourage contemplation of the extraordinary nature of the ordinary...

---

the GALLERIES

GHOST... GRIDS... BABES... WAKE... FLOATERS... CHAIRED... QUARTET...

GARDEN... SUMMER ... BEACH... CANADA... PAPER... COMPASS

---

many thanks to Andrew Balfour and Josh Bates and David Barbour and Martin Lipman for their photo-documentation

---

---

navigate the site GALLERIES details resumé contact

---

---