Patrick Coombes


Profile

Patrick Coombes
Age: 22
City: Dartmouth
Country: United Kingdom
Joined: Jun 2009

I am Patrick Gino Coombes, a recent graduate from Swansea Metropolitan University and a practicing artist. I live to paint.

During the past year my work has begun to move in a new direction. I am increasingly concerned with documenting contemporary urban life in such a way that does not shy away from its darker aspects. A series of paintings, drawn from my own experiences in Swansea, examine nightclub culture – specifically, the ways in which alcohol and sex dominate this culture. What interests me about this culture particularly is the fact that gender roles are often more strictly adhered to, more obviously on display, in nightclub culture than in other contexts. By gender roles I mean not only the social roles men and women adopt but the sartorial choices by which people hope to define themselves. My aesthetic involves exaggerating, often to comic effect, certain idiosyncrasies in the scenes I depict.

Indeed, my current work is overtly concerned with theories of gender, and seeks to unsettle received ideas about masculinity and femininity. I take myself as subject-matter, and contrast images of my own fluid sense of gender identity with those one would more readily associate with me as a white heterosexual male. I am also concerned to show how my relationships with others have given shape to my understanding of gender. I have by and large concentrated my energies on producing work which features cross-sections of my own body, but have done so in such a way that keeps the work anonymous and sexually ambiguous. While some of these works depict me doing something which fits the stereotype of masculinity, the overall character or aesthetic of the work is firmly androgynous. I have included materials in my work such as gel pens, which are traditionally used by teenage girls. In my most recent work I have included black and white photographs of my family and friends within my large scale paintings, to convey the fact that I am shaped and moulded from them. Who I am is a mixture of anybody who impacts upon my life. Even in my choice of materials, then, I have tried to disturb the traditionally male-orientated world of painting.

If you would like to see more of my work then please visit my website, it is www.aestheticgino.webeden.co.uk