OXLEY, Patricia

 

Multimedia artist, Patricia Oxley, became an artist in later life.  She was born in 1947 in Salford to a working class Irish Catholic family, but her mother became ill and died whilst Patricia was still  in her formative years.  Patricia was interested in art from an early age and wanted to attend art college after leaving school, but her father refused to support her ambition.

Instead, Patricia attended Leeds to study English (1968), then in 1990 she returned to education to study Linguistics at Lancaster University.  She worked in the Civil Service and taught English in Tunisia and Jordan.

Patricia also married and raised a family, and it was only in later life that she was able to return to her lifelong ambition and the serious study of art:

I returned to study art and started off at Eastbourne College, where I was lucky to study in a department headed by Pete Webster – one of the landmark teachers in my life.  There followed a series of attempts to get an art degree falling at fences each time because of family needs – illnesses, grandchildren: the usual story of so many people.

Leeds University art department was my last try – a fabulous place which offered me a dive into art history and aesthetics.  It gave me what I needed – a range of  ‘tools to think with.’

 

 

 

 

Patricia now works in a range of art media, including painting, life drawing, digital imaging, photography, and fusing images using an algorithm. She says of her artwork:

I assert the right to not say what my work is ‘about’. I am looking for something. I don’t know it, can’t say it, but I know it when I see it because it pleases me.

My interests are, however, in neuroaesthetics, artificial intelligence and the never ending search for that small psychic buzz that promises an answer but instead prompts further searching.