Fleur Patrick is a contemporary painter who works with and adapts found images, sourced from a wide range of mediated origins. She selects imagery which is non-specific, and yet strangely familiar to her, becoming catalysts for the uncanny. This draws on and reflects her own experiences of displacement and alienation.
Oil paint is applied in thin, translucent glazes of colour, before being wiped away to reveal previous layers, like palimpsests. It is interesting how this process requires a negative act of paint removal to define the painting’s form and structure.
The work explores tensions between the painting’s image and surface, each serving to suppress the other. The clarity of the image can seem to oscillate, materialising briefly, before dissolving back into more abstract form. This precarious balance resists our attempts to fully locate, enter and navigate the space of the image, as though shrouded by a veil of uncertainty; instead leaving space for the viewer to project into the painting.
Fleur was born in New Zealand and emigrated to the UK as a child; leaving behind her home and family. This upheaval, combined with challenges faced as a neurodivergent woman, have left her with an acute sense of both geographical and social estrangement. The work draws from these disorienting experiences.
She graduated with a 1st class Fine Art degree before completing a Painting MA at the Royal College of Art in 2003. Fleur has previously won the Zurich Contemporary Painting Prize, Amlin Painting Award, Desmond Preston Drawing Award and was a finalist of the Lexmark European Art Prize. In 2022 she was a finalist in the BEEP Painting Prize and won the Artist Surfaces Award through Artist Support Pledge. Previous exhibition venues include Pumphouse Gallery, Korean Ambassador’s Residency, London Art Fair, Art Frankfurt and The Commonwealth Institute. After living in London for many years, she now lives and works in Nottinghamshire. Her work is exhibited internationally and is included in numerous private collections.
