The Dangling Conversation, Patrick Lears

About

Patrick Lears' work has at it’s core an expansive sense of play, with experimentation, variety and diversity jumping in. Looking for the moment when something coheres but then opens, and sets him off- away from usual decisions and directions.

Using material resources available to him - clay, wood, glass, paper, photographs and paint - Lears enjoy using leftover scraps or found materials to conjure new forms. Seeking some sort of visual harmony that feels to be just there, waiting to speak. Often there is loads of playful mess and a disheartening halt to action.

This is what helps Lears to evolve new meanings, new conversations, new combinations and unions. It feels (comically) like it takes courage to do this and face the practice every day - to carry on that never-finished conversation between what is and what could be.

Patrick Lears was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland. He studied at Towson University, the Maryland Institute, and the College of Art Central St Martins, London. He lived and worked in London between 1999 to 2020 before moving to Margate in 2021. Lears regularly exhibits his work both nationally and internationally, including recent group exhibitions at The Terrace Gallery (London), Linden Hall (Deal), Hastings Contemporary (Hastings),  and The Lido Stores (Margate).