Liam Patrick Harkin | Artist

Liam Patrick Harkin is a Derbyshire-based artist working primarily in painting and mixed media.

I came to painting relatively late, and not through art school or formal fine art training. I began painting during a period of significant decline in my health, when much of the life I had known suddenly became smaller and more difficult. Making art gave me somewhere else to put things. It became a way of processing what was happening, communicating things I couldn’t always put into words and, increasingly, making sense of myself and the world around me.

What began as something cathartic has developed into a serious and evolving art practice. I work mainly with acrylics, oils and mixed media, although I like experimenting and don’t feel particularly interested in sticking to rules about what an artwork should be made from or how it should look. Some pieces are carefully considered; others begin with an idea, an image or a feeling and develop as I work.

My work moves between the personal and the political. I return often to themes of identity, grief, memory, power, injustice and the ways we treat one another and other animals. Some work is autobiographical, some observational, and some deliberately confrontational. Humour also often finds its way in. I don’t think seriousness and playfulness have to be opposites.

I’m particularly interested in art as a means of communication. I want work to make somebody feel something, question something or look again. That might mean creating a very personal portrait, painting something absurd because it makes me laugh, or making work about animal exploitation and asking the viewer to confront their own relationship with it.

I’m still learning, experimenting and allowing my practice to change. I don’t have a traditional fine art background and don’t pretend to. Painting became part of my life because I needed it, and somewhere along the way it became what I do.