Bio

Patrick Conklin, born 1998 in Ormond Beach Florida, is an American painter whose work ranges from medial manifestations of self, the misery and joy of the human experience, to post impressionistic landscapes and the exhibition of memory. Conklin’s work has been exhibited in New York, Florida, California, France, and Portugal, all to great acclaim. He makes his paintings in multiple studios across Portugal, France, and Florida.

Conklin’s mediums range from oil paints and pastels, to charcoal and chalks, acrylic latex house paints, concrete enamels, roofing tar, spray paints, plasters, and whatever else he may find available for use. Having grown up working with his father, a painter and contractor, Patrick Conklin sought obsession-like inspirations in how the paint drops, and how runaway lines find there way down to the canvas protecting the floor, how the unwanted marks organize themselves in a randomly natural state on the ground.

Having access to surplus paints and canvas, Conklin has created hundreds of works on stretched canvas beginning at a very young age, most of which reside in private collections across north Florida. In the present days, his work is drawn from the very boundaries, not of painting, but of life itself. To quote the artist directly: “I feel as if I am only the vehicle by which these paintings come to life, for I believe they have all been waiting for me this whole time. I wish for them not to be understood, but to be felt, as another happening of the human experience, like when you look at an old rock against a new sky, freshly painted crosswalk on an old road, or an old blind beggar sitting against a mosque on a dusty street in Morocco. The paintings consist of marks that each have their own history of contemplation, regret, and, sometimes triumph—this creates the ensemble of emotion I wish to express rather than illustrate with picture like composition. When I am painting I truly don’t know where I am going. It is sort of a wander. Not until we get to know each other—the painting and I—do I reach some vague understanding of the place in which we yearn for.”