Patricia Fernández

Patricia Fernández merges aspects of portraiture, still life and sculpture in her expansive practice. Geometric patterns, symbols and coordinates are meticulously engraved into wooden surfaces or rendered with oils on linen where this precise imagery meets sensuous washes of colour and spectral depictions of moons, stars or hazy sleeping figures. While exploring the contours of cosmology, references to painters such as Hilma af Klint can be seen in Fernández’s oeuvre, being that she brings together spirituality and science. Working with earthy, organic tones, the artist increasingly incorporates found wood in her pieces—with mahogany, walnut and poplar forming the crux of her sculptures or being utilised as frames for the paintings. Time is a central fascination for the artist, as she thinks through the contrasts and peculiarities between geological time, cosmological time, and humanity’s own construction of time passing. Clocks continually resurface as key iconography within Fernández’s work, as well as lunar cycles as the artist tracks individual, personal rhythms against, circadian, astronomical patterns. All at once deeply personal and spectral, Fernández continues to make work which meditates on some of life’s biggest queries. ...