Patricia Cain is a Dumfries and Galloway-based artist, author and researcher who completed her PhD through the practice of drawing at Glasgow School of Art.

Her practice (drawing, painting, sculpture and public art) is intimately connected to her interest in skill-lead art-making processes, the value of these as First Person research methodologies and the importance of teaching and encouraging skill in this era of concept-led Art Education.

“I am involved with the idea that you can paint or draw something terribly complex and through making it, it becomes nothing. I often seek this absence though a process that involves intense scrutiny.

Invariably, my work is on the cusp of both abstract and figuration – a place where observation turns inwards. For me, energy is fundamental: the dominant energy resides in empty space. In the balancing up between abstraction and figuration, it is the absence or negative space that activates the artwork, yet also makes it unstable.”