A Curious Struggle

Work in the allegorical tradition, where art is a symbol for a present reality.

Are you in the wrong place or is the place wrong around you? It’s hard to tell sometimes. That’s just the kind of off-kilter place Tim Patrick and Maria Farrar will put you when you visit A Curious Struggle, an exhibition with an uncanny sense of the familiar and a disconcerting feeling of ‘otherness’. “The paintings are about the mystery that surrounds the way certain truths are illuminated when the time is right. Searching around in lost time and finding something we could relate to, we come closer to the present,” says Maria.

Tim Patrick’s paintings are about gloss and veneers, layers of reality, and meanings that lie just beneath the surface. There is a look and feel of something being witnessed in his paintings, but we’re never quite sure what. He looks for something mysterious and unsettled in his subjects; a disconnectedness where the situation, though familiar, has a sense of the ‘other’ about it.

Maria Farrar explores the extent that distance and closeness are necessary for understanding.
Maria references medieval tapestry and stained glass traditions, excerpting narrative but revealing no distinct story. Scenes are plucked out of time reconfigured and presented in such a way that they seem familiar, yet remain elusive. She is fascinated by the mysterious way truth is revealed in its own time.