Patsy McArthur
These works on paper are rooted in the body; its memories, impulses, awkwardness and excess. Working quickly and instinctively with ink, pastel and gouache, I allow female figures to distort and dissolve through washes, stains, line and bursts of colour.My characters remember what it feels like to dance, desire, perform, unravel and endure.They inhabit the afterlife of former selves, where past identities are not simply remembered but remain physical, unruly and still in motion.October, 2026
"Over the last year there has been a profound shift in my practice. Moving away from realism and a highly planned process, I have started working from an internal, emotional space shaped by memory and lived experience. Recent drawings, collages, and mixed media pieces centre around a recurring female figure, part self-portrait, part invention.
She’s born from the wild highs and lows of my youth. I’m exploring the grief in letting go of those earlier selves, but also a ferocious kind of freedom. At the core of this new work is a wild, feminine energy and a refusal to be boxed in. Returning to colour, theatricality and intuitive mark-making feels like reconnecting with my younger self and an artist I couldn’t be before now.
The resulting work occupies a space between vulnerability and defiance, tracing the internal movements, (rupture, resilience, memory), that shape identity. This new direction is a reclamation of voice, instinct and authenticity, and my bid for creative freedom." (Patsy McArthur, 2026)
Patsy McArthur is a Scottish visual artist working in drawing and mixed media. Over the last two decades she has spent periods of time living and working in Barcelona, Berlin and Sydney and has been based in Brighton, UK since 2013.
She has exhibited extensively throughout the UK and internationally, held solo shows with Thompsons Gallery, London, Union Gallery, Edinburgh, Le Salon Vert in Geneva and shown regularly at Art Miami and throughout the US. Recently a shortlisted finalist of the inaugural Castlegate Prize, she has also been a regular exhibitor at the Mall Galleries and the Royal Scottish Academy.
After two decades working in a controlled realist mode, her practice is now undergoing a significant transformation moving in an instinctive, expressive and autobiographical direction. Her current work explores embodiment, emotional inheritance, rupture, resilience and internal states of movement.