Patrick Oates

Says Patrick Oates of this work, "Five seagulls weathering a storm, some clearer than others, some almost lost to the atmosphere around them while still moving through it."

Oates paints figures and landscapes that never quite reveal whether they are emerging or disappearing. The work returns to familiar people he never met, places he can’t quite claim, and the gap between what gets passed down and what gets imagined around it.

The same air and light hold every painting regardless of subject. A single world emerges across the work, built from rural landscapes, family folklore and personal observation rather than any fixed place. Small anomalies recur; light behaving strangely, colour belonging to a feeling rather than observation, following no logic but feeling slightly inevitable. The work asks what we carry, what we come from, and where we belong, then refuses to answer. That refusal is the point.