Patrick Bremer is an award-winning English painter and collage artist, who creates vibrant, emotionally charged portraits from his rural Somerset studio using glue-and-paper collages that blend nature, fashion, and typography to explore human identity and experience. Let’s explore Patrick's background, creative inspirations, driving motivations, and current projects in detail.
/ Tell us about your studio.
It used to be a bakery, now occupied by myself and a printmaker, Mark Doyle, next door. It’s a lovely space with high ceilings, but does get very chilly. I have my two dogs there with me, and also a picture framing workshop for framing my own and some local artists and clients. It’s a bit of organised chaos in there, with collage material strewn all over the floor during a large piece. The studio is just down the road from the fire station, so I can work there during the day whilst also on call as a retained firefighter.
/ What’s your background?
After art school, I worked as a secondary school art teacher in Sussex for a few years, which is where I started using collage more in my work. Then, a few years as a picture framer, before moving to Berlin to work full time as an artist. We thought we’d just be there for 6 months, and stayed for 8 years, and it was a fantastic place to live and make art with lots of opportunities for artists. I came back to the UK a few years ago and have now settled in Somerset, on Exmoor.
/ How do you find motivation?
There’s a good deal of play and experimentation when making the work, which also means there’s an unpredictability to it too. Not knowing what materials, colours, etc. I may find, or how the collage is going to layer up keeps me excited to make them. Each piece feels like an exploration, and that keeps me engaged.
/ What drives your work?
My main body of work focuses on collage figures and portraits, where I layer fragments of found images and materials on the canvas. Collage as a medium offers unique opportunities to introduce different images, patterns, text and motifs directly into a portrait, pushing the portrait into abstraction and encouraging the viewer to look closer. This act of cutting and pasting, juxtaposing elements from graphic design, fashion, culture, and nature, allows me to explore themes of identity and memory through the lens of the zeitgeist.
/ If you could choose one song from one album to reflect your work, what would it be and why?
The Caterpillar by The Cure. It’s like a collage in music form – experimental, colourful and scrappy. And I just love The Cure and caterpillars.
/ Where do you draw inspiration from?
Although my work predominantly features figures, I’m always inspired by colour, the Exmoor sunsets, the red soil here, rolling hills walking the dogs in the morning, and the local Somerset characters I meet.
/ Which three colours could you not do without?
Red, blue and yellow.
/ How has your style or subject matter changed or developed?
They are definitely looser now as I have become more comfortable with the medium. I’m happier breaking my own rules, and drawing or painting directly into the collage, and experimenting with more mixed media. You can tell stories through how the human body is posed, and I love trying to convey that without being too prescriptive.
/ What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
My art teacher would always hammer into us to embrace the process, not just the result, so this is always at the front of my mind when working on a piece. Some works don’t make the grade and are never seen outside of the studio. Sometimes I chop them up and use them in other work, so none of it is a waste, just part of the process.
/ Who inspires you?
My dad was an artist and taught me to draw, and continues to inspire me in the studio, as well as painters who work with large flat planes of colour, whether it be abstract or figurative – Henri Matisse, Richard Diebenkorn and Euan Uglow.
/ If you could own one piece of artwork, what would it be?
Orange and Black Wall by Franz Kline.
/ Alongside yourself, who would be in your ideal group exhibition (from any period of time) and what’s the title?
Richard Diebenkorn, Franz West, Peter Lanyon and Aryz, “Go West”.
/ What are you currently working on and what’s next?
I have been experimenting with some monotone collages lately; I often spend so long creating the drawings for my collages and wanted to put more focus on those. So I have been drawing, and cutting up and layering the drawings. I avoided it before as the glue would run with the graphite and make a huge mess, but I’m now embracing those uncontrolled elements. Looking forward to seeing where they take me!
Discover Patrick Bremer's vibrant collages and portraits showcased at Hancock Gallery.
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