PATRICK DONLAN
art being transcendental for humans. In fact, he saw it as true knowledge and not just a distraction from everyday life, a mere fancy.
Schopenhauer believed music to be the highest form of all the arts. I see painting as visual music: both are compositions or arrangements, both have rhythm and tone, both evoke moods and dreams. I feel that the analogy of music is the easiest way to describe my approach i.e. music can be seen and paintings can be heard. The viewer or the listener can interpret as they wish but first and foremost it is a pre-literal, intuitive experience and therefore totally immediate.
Currently, I am working on more expressionistic, atavistic paintings but as far as themes or styles go I am at a point where I will rule nothing out and I am more open to new ideas than ever before. It's truly an exciting time for me as an artist.
On a personal note, I became a painter as I was attracted to the mystery that paintings can invoke and the moods they create. We need painting now more than ever. I have always loved the silence of paintings, their "secular holiness". We need to be transfixed by a single image, another world; we need to dream, we need to feel; in other words, we need to spiritually connect again, rather than just being passive observers.
Patrick Donlan was born in 1962 in Warrington, England to Irish immigrant parents. He studied Literature and Philosophy at Middlesex University, London and after graduating travelled to Asia spending time in Japan, Hong Kong, Thailand and Taiwan. After a brief spell in Bayswater, London, he returned to Hong Kong where he is currently based.
Artist's Statement
Coming from an industrial area in the North West of England my earliest influences were religious art as seen in the local churches, the sometimes beautiful complexity of the factories, and the new wave of architecture and design that was replacing the old Victorian landscape.
I studied Philosophy and Literature at college and was particularly influenced by Arthur Schopenhauer, a 19th century German philosopher, who postulated the idea of