Patricia Latham

Patricia Latham is a visual artist whose art practice is inspired by 'altered states'.
My mixed media assemblages express a love of the Sussex coastline - the beaches of Hastings, Birling Gap Seaford and Eastbourne - my passion for the textures of distressed surfaces - beach debris, altered by time, the weather and the sea.
I am fascinated with the process of collecting, selecting and rejecting - the desire to work with artifacts not immediately identifiable - to give the flotsam and jetsam of life a new meaning, through construction and abstraction, adding value and realigning our observation of the everyday world -and - by doing so create an 'altered state.'
Debris becomes a composition - a landscape or seascape juxtaposing light and dark, with contrasts of texture, colour, proportion and scale. I am constantly working with gesture and transformation. Materials are twisted, wrapped, threaded, pulled, sewn, frayed, bound, squashed, cut, burnt, ground down, melted - and altered to take on a new form. Recurring themes include circles, layering, overlapping shapes and textures - the act of 'looking through'.
The canvasses can evolve from a particular item found: often, they reflect a sense of place.

'Winter landscape'
Mixed media
30 x 30 cms

'Blue Moon'
Mixed media
40 x 40 cms

'Etude'
Mixed media
40 x 40 cms