Patsy McArthur studied painting in Aberdeen in the North East of Scotland at Gray's School of Art in the late 90s and gained a Masters in European Fine Art from the Winchester School of Art Barcelona program in 2001. Since then she has spent periods of time living and working in Barcelona, Berlin and Sydney and has undertaken residencies in NYC, Italy and Shanghai.
She has exhibited extensively throughout the UK and internationally, recently exhibiting at Context during Art Miami, and has held recent solo shows with Thompsons Gallery in London and Le Salon Vert in Geneva. Patsy has been based in Brighton, UK since 2013.
The artist - I make drawings and paintings which study space, light and movement and explore themes of escapism. I strive to make images with a sense of power and energy or potential energy. My interests lie in the fragmented and fleeting nature of experience; the interplay between submission and will; the moving and fixed and the figure and its environment.
I’ve been using movement as subject matter for many years now and my drawing work with the horse in motion as subject is an important part of that. My process starts with taking research footage of horses being lunged, often over fences. I'm interested in the shapes and the positive and negative space the horse creates and by removing any background context in the image, I aim to focus the viewer on their power and grace through space.
Using pencil, graphite powder and charcoal I enjoy the full range of tones to build the form and sense of movement and by stripping the image back to monochrome we become more focused on shape. Through my horse drawings, I'm trying to make really contemporary, emotional works which have as much to do with us as humans as they do with horses.