Patrick Bryson 
Paintings

Patrick Bryson

Born in County Derry, Northern Ireland

Lives & works in London

I paint in order to try to understand my place in the world. I have never understood the world as it has been given to me, so painting and thinking about painting is a life raft that keeps me afloat in the delirious beauty and chaos of experience.  
   Fascinated and compelled by the surface of things I have found that life does not live there but in the layers upon layers of thought, vision, memory, mind and imagination that swirl and froth below the shiny surface of things.

   Through the act of painting, I search for pristine images without being clinical, the freedom of chaos without contamination and for enthusiasm without attachment.

   Painting gives me glimpses of truth and reality that can never be fully captured and through perseverance I have found a sweet kind of freedom in a nourishing cycle of rest and creative adventure without end. @artnanogI am a Irish Painter and I make original and unique artworks. My work is part painting, part collage – visual experiments, as free as possible.

   My art is philosophical in the sense that I use painting to help me understand existence. I have always found freedom from existential restlessness through painting. Over time my practice has taken me on a long journey of discovery and has helped to be more at ease with being and the passing of time.

   There are many roads to take when engaging in contemporary painting practice. Whether used for personal expression or to explore historical and cultural considerations we can be powered consciously or unconsciously by a wide variety of motivations and rewards. I find that the real power of painting to be transformative, in the sense of developing a deeper sense of being connected to life. I have found that the ability to explore and transform oneself using the simple materials of the painter to be endlessly fascinating and compelling.

   Over time I have developed techniques using acrylic paint, collaged paper, transparent and opaque substrates which I overlay and arrange without knowing where I am going. I try to create as much controlled chaos as I can in order to bypass the obstacle of already knowing or being repetitious, which inevitably occur from memory and conditioning. I find it essential to work this way in order to discover novel outcomes and doorways to enriched experience. There is something mysterious about finding new forms, composition and messages that arise out of this way of working.