Patrick Palmer
To See Your Face, oil on wood, 42 cm x 30 cm, 2013
Girl on Stool, red chalk drawing, 2013
Mine, Conté, red chalk, and charcoal drawing, 16.5″ x 11.8″ x 0.4″, 2014
The Unveiling, original oil on paper, 51 cm x 43 com, 2013
Portrait in Sienna, original oil on canvas, 50 cm x 40 cm, 2012
The Prettiest Girl in Town, original oil, 2013
Artist Statement
A professional artist, I exhibit at a number of galleries across the United Kingdom. I also teach life drawing at The Firestation Centre for Arts and Culture in Windsor.
While acknowledging that an element of realism is important, I try to move beyond artistic convention and avoid an image that is too predictable. Realism is not enough: What you take away and what you add to what you see are what transform a picture into art. I aim to create, not simply recreate.
I believe that viewers want to see a degree of draughtsmanship from an artist but also that they deserve more; thus, I aspire to make my pictures touch people personally and to be considered works of beauty.
About the Artist
Patrick Palmer was born in Henley, England, in 1966. At the age of 40, having attended part-time drawing classes for 15 years, he gave up a successful publishing career to pursue art. He wanted to see how far he could go. He used interest-free credit to finance his way through art school, first at Heatherley’s School of Fine Art in London and then at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin.
Palmer signed up to a life drawing class in London, where he was surprised to find that the tutor was Michael Clark, a close friend of Francis Bacon. Palmer’s discovery inspired him enormously.
Originally, Palmer worked in charcoal; he now prefers oil painting and glazing, which allow him to get a better tonal range and a wider variety of effects. He specializes in the human form and portraiture, avoiding pure realism while striving to take life drawing to another level.
Palmer’s favorite artists are Degas, Schiele, Rembrandt, and Klimt but he finds inspiration daily from individual images he comes across in books and on the Internet.
For the past four years, Palmer, who was shortlisted for the Art Gemini Prize, has exhibited across the United Kingdom; previously, he showed his work in Hong Kong. He is now the life drawing tutor at The Firestation Centre for Arts and Culture in Windsor, England.
Palmer’s Pretty in Pink was on display at Rebecca Hossack Gallery in London from January 23 to February 7, 2014.
Claudia Moscovici, cofounder of postromanticism.com and an art critic (Romanticism and Postromanticism, Lexington Books, 2007), has written of the artist, “Patrick Palmer is a master of figurative art. His post-romantic nudes are not only exquisitely painted, but also dreamy, delicate and suggestive. They only hint at sensuality and evoke fantasy in the subtle and elegant manner that distinguishes art from pornography.”
The Firestation Centre for Arts and Culture
Foss Fine Art Ltd. (London, England)
Gallery Off the Wall (Cardiff, Wales)
Take to Art (Staffordshire, England)
Island Fine Arts (Isle of Wight, England)
Box Galleries (London, England)
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