About The Artist

Patricia MacNeil is a bi-coastal artist, with small studios on both Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia and Vancouver Island, British Columbia.  She was born outside Canada, has lived in 6 provinces and 1 territory during her family association with, and later, her own 28 year career in the Canadian Armed Forces. It was this traveling that has instilled a love of Canada and the multicultural peoples that inhabit this vast country.  Patricia has finished her Fine Arts Degree with Emily Carr University in 2010 and will continue her art practice, exploring the cultural similarities and differences that each island present to her.

Artist Statement

With the celtic blood of my heritage flowing, I feel the call of the ancients in the artworks I am inspired to create. To bring the traditional into the contemporary, to create a cultural heritage that is evolving and growing, is the challenge I have set for myself in my work.  I believe every culture is a living entity and the only way to nurture its survival is to actively participate in that culture.  The tartans I work with embody the belonging of family and the distance of relationships.  These colourful threads not only reflect their individual hues but are affected by the surrounding colours, making surprising juxtapositions.  The tartans that I create are all based on the registered weaving patterns, respecting the beauty and ingenuity of the original creators .  I have developed 4 series of work that observes each media differently.  The Wet Coast tartan series uses water based media to give the look of rain soaked or water splashed tartans.  The homespun tartan series is where each thread is represented and given the look of homespun threads.  The colour block series show the threads blocked together as solid or transparent colour.  Finally there is the contemporary tartan series where sections of tartan, such as the warp, the weft, or close up sections are incorporated into abstract landscapes, or stand on their own as abstract paintings.

I try to bring a personal sensibility to the urban and social grids that weave their way through not only our lives, but through our cultures as well.  I achieve this by weaving social issues and contemporary landscapes with the formal qualities of the cultural icons into art that can viewed as the fabric of my life.  The aim of my work is to bring the past to meet the present, creating the heirlooms of tomorrow with the haunting beauty of the past.  I feel it is our heritage that ties us to who we are today and is what we will  leave for those who come after us.