PRESS RELEASE
EMILY PATRICK
THREE YEARS’ PAINTING
20 September – 2 October
CONTACT AND IMAGES
Michael Perry
Telephone: +44 20 8858 0427
Mobile: +44 7785 307113
Email: enquiries@emilypatrick.com
Website: www.emilypatrick.com
11 AUGUST 2010
Emily Patrick, the Greenwich-based artist has quietly built a large and ardent fan base
while remaining true to the principles of landscape painting, portraiture and still-life. Born
in 1959, she studied architecture at Cambridge before becoming a painter. This will be her
eleventh solo exhibition. Her two most recent shows were cited as “Critic’s Choice” in the
Financial Times and among the “Top 5 Galleries / Best of the Arts” in The Times. Her work
has been described as “latter-day Impressionist.”
One Legged
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“this distinctive figurative painter, a 21st-century intimiste … combines intense
technical accomplishment … with a vibrant expressiveness and an airy feel for
light and colour. Most compelling is the sense of interiority, half melancholy,
half rapturous, in the still lifes of flowers, set against mirrors or dark furniture
and the sense of nature condensed yet uncontrollable, bursting to the picture’s
edges, in the landscape close-ups.”
–
Jackie Wullschlager, Financial Times
Shadows on a Slate
Her work quietly demands attention through its decisive quality, charm and unusual
sincerity. The subjects are traditional but the treatment of them is experimental, painterly,
sometimes abstracted and always full of vivid appeal.
Patrick’s paintings have a calm and humane subject matter and a style that appeals to
many. Easily recognisable, they also provoke thought, curiosity and admiration, and are
sought after with zeal by her many collectors in Britain and the United States.
She lives in Greenwich, beside the Royal Park, which she often paints. Her early Georgian
house, a bohemian time warp full of curiosities and antiques, also features. She works
closely with her husband Michael Perry. Together they manage her exhibitions and design
the frame for each painting, which together they make, colour and sometimes gild.
Patrick’s work sells for between £2,000 and £30,000. Concerned that her work was not
financially available to all those who enjoyed it, Michael has now set up a successful private
printing press, selling prints for between £100 and £400.
Emily Patrick has featured in a number of newspapers and magazines, including The
Sunday Telegraph, the Saturday Times, The Evening Standard and Vogue. She is an
articulate, engaging champion of figurative art.
She is available for interview.
www.emilypatrick.com
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ON THE REVIVAL OF THE ENGLISH LOVE OF LANDSCAPE PAINTING
Wastelanders
People’s attitude to countryside is changing. We all sense how threatened it is. Most
people know of a mud path that is now lost under tarmac. We see its disappearance under
housing, industrial estates, tourism and transport links. Perhaps this explains why people
have begun to share my pleasure in landscape. In 2005, I had painted a picture of a patch
of woodland ground – mud, decaying leaves and a few green shoots. It was everybody’s
favourite picture in the show of that year.
I think this change is also reflected in two recent countryside commissions. Rather than
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being asked to paint a portrait or the house, I was given freedom to choose any aspect of
the landscape that I chose. The paintings from last year’s expedition to Settrington, North
Yorkshire, will be included at the exhibition in September.
Many of the landscapes in this show are painted from an unusually low eye-level, so that
you are immersed, and see both the far stretch of the land, and its constituent elements,
up-close before you. As children we most acutely relate to nature, and I hope that the
viewpoints found in my landscapes can give back this sensation to their viewers.
ON AN UNTIDY HOUSE
Sky over Laundry
Traditionally, artists are expected to hide themselves away in their studios, I think that this
is a mistake. An artist and their family profit from living beside one another. A studio is an
inward-looking empty space waiting for the artist to bring it alive, whereas the clutter of a
home is an infinitely rich source of subject matter. As a wife and mother, my intention is to
make my family and others aware of the romance of everyday life, be it laundry drying, an
unfinished breakfast table or the ingredients for supper.
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ON THE PAINTING OF GARDENS
Up into an Apple Tree
Gardens seem an obvious subject for an artist, yet they have troubled me. The patterns and
punches of colour are a completed work of art. There is no need for an artist to explain or
point them out. It feels a bit like painting a picture of a sculpture – a photographer can do a
better job.
However, today, much of my painting is done in gardens. I don’t look at flower heads
so much as their stalks, nor at a tree so much as into it. The point at which the plant
disappears into the soil is the most exciting, an area of great mystery. I love the dark
shadows in under the plants. These throw up and show off the shapes of the leaves.
Flowers are the final trumpet call. Everything else comes first.
NOTES TO THE EDITOR
The 64-page catalogue can be viewed at http://www.emilypatrick.com
Gallery
Exhibition
32 Dover Street
20 September – 2 October 2010
London W1S 4NF
Monday – Saturday 10:00am – 6:00pm
+44 20 7409 1544 (during exhibition)
(Thursday and Friday until 8:00pm)
www.emilypatrick.com
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