Patrick Oates

Says Patrick Oates of this work, "A coral reflection sits on the wet sand with no visible source. Is it someone saying something from somewhere else, or just the reflection? And does it matter?

"When my dog suddenly and unexpectedly became critically ill, my partner and I found ourselves doing things we would never normally do. Building altars, burning palo santo, listening for signs in songs on the radio, prayer, anything. My mum keeping him in her thoughts, my mother-in-law praying for him every night beside her bed, a friend casting a spell. All at the same time. Growing up alongside multiple belief systems and knowing I couldn’t fully belong to any of them, faith had always felt like something that excluded me. It was in that moment of desperation that I saw it differently.

"These paintings sit in that space. A reflection with no source. An orb in the sky. A coral light with nothing to cast it. Each one asks whether the meaning we bring to a thing changes what it is, and whether that even matters."

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.