David Patrick makes paintings, altered books, boxes, collages and drawings. He likes the empirical adventure of making, finding it a satisfying & rewarding thing to lose yourself in. At his best he makes handmade objects of ideas, consideration and emotional expression. He is interested in pursuing the qualities of materials, strong colour, graphic observation and composition.

See David’s work as part of our annual Spring open call, Keep Your Eye on the Doughnut, Not the Hole, which runs April 3rd to 24th, featuring an incredible collection of works by thirty artists leaning into joy, curiosity, and the often surreal pleasure of focusing on what is rather than what isn’t, in a myriad of mediums.

Hi David! Can you talk us through your creative process?
Painting wise. I paint the whole board one colour – I like pink, blue, black, yellow etc. I then work out some kind of second graphic step: a big shape or a stripe or texture or patch, usually hinting at an interior or exterior space. Choosing the colours, what brush, and how I’m going to use the paint and brush is hugely important for every step from then on. I love colour and pursue it strongly in my painting. I don’t think I’m smart enough to pursue any colour theory and I’m far too restless to stick to it anyway, but colour is a major thought in my head when making these days.

I work out the composition on my phone, taking a picture of what I’ve done so far and using the drawing app to work out the next step. It can only be a guide because brushes and oil paints do their own thing, and thats kind of the whole point. Spending ages in Photoshop or Gimp or even making real preparatory studies is a big waste of time for me. It’s all about creating substantial, meaningful, physical objects through the adventure of making. Time and discovery get painted in to the paintings, learning to be there in the moment is key.

How do you overcome creative blocks?
I don’t really experience them, my head fills with ideas all of the time. The voices! The voices! If things aren’t really working at all that day, there’s lots of practical things that need doing around the actual making (‘for Gods sake update your website David! …are you dead?’ ..still not updated it). Also going and doing something else entirely different like cooking or sleeping or going for a walk (I’m a walkaholic) or unrepeatable text exchanges with friends tends to work.

What emotions or reactions do you hope viewers experience when they see your artwork?
That they can fight through all the commerce, noise, gossip, cliques, fashions, societal glibness, and hipster transience, and see the thing for itself.

Hopefully I’ve made a sensitive physical object that over time communicates in some way what it is to be a human and exist, and that you are not alone going through this.

Which artists inspire you? Are there non-artistic influences such as literature or music that impact your work?
Yeah I’m ever so slightly a music obsessive. Hunners and hunners of records and CDs. That’s probably the biggest influence. Usually its the way things are made/constructed that occupies my thoughts, the materials and ideas expressed with them. Painting wise I like Fiona Rae’s stuff a lot, she’s the topmost. Loads of old graphic design finds it’s way into my making thoughts. Early 80s album cover art and graphics and logos. Sun Ra Arkestra has been a big philosophical role model for me in my making since about 2011. Simply in the defiant purity of doing your own thing and being resourceful, ambitious, and diverse with materials and ideas, and achieving a non hierarchical relationship with them, like using wood board or an old frame instead of canvas, making all values count. Though obviously oil paints do cost a bomb, there’s nothing egalitarian about the pricing there.

Are there specific advantages or challenges associated with working in your chosen mediums? Have you experimented with other mediums or techniques?
I only started painting coming out of lockdown. I qualified for those Rishi Sunak self-employed grants so I use them to buy lots of oil paints, brushes and mediums, like Shellsol and linseed oil. Oil paint really is the most amazing thing to work with. You can do all kinds of things and make all kinds of marks – and the colours! I took to it very easily and kind of wished I’d started earlier. It helped that I had a stack of experience working with images and other materials of course. I wasn’t starting from scratch. Though the first few months were largely a mess.

Prior to painting I worked for a long time in collage/mixed media and I was mainly known (if known at all) for that. Though I did make some good prints I wasted a lot of time and energy printmaking for few years, when it really didn’t make me flow or frankly that I even cared about it much at all. Getting older makes you wise up. 2012 onwards I started to make these specific type of improvised drawings with ballpoint pen, and that was a massive creative leap forward for me.

From about 2009 I started to make dense artists books and book objects with collage and drawing and ink. An old girlfriend from the 00s introduced me to artists books and made some very fantastic ones themselves. I have settled in to making a book a year in the winter months when there’s not enough light in the day to paint seriously, usually November through to February/March-ish. Past two years its been buying a hard back from a charity shop for a few £££ and working with its formal qualities doing things to it, altering it. So it’s taking something that has become largely unwanted because of the transience of commerce, removing it from that exploitative inevitable landfill end and imbuing it with thoughtfulness and permanence.

Are there any upcoming events or additional information you would like the audience to know?
I’m possibly going to have a show of my book based work in another country in the autumn or early next year. I shall know pretty soon. Go and see my painting and other folks stuff at Six Foot. They are, from my recent experience very nice unpretentious folk running the space with a very healthy egalitarian ethos [Thanks, David! – SFG] Buy some art if you can. Buy my art if you can!

Keep up with David and his work over on Instagram. Keep Your Eye on the Doughnut, Not the Hole runs at Six Foot Gallery until Thursday 24th April 2025.