A Post-Religious Icon: Finding Nourishment in Ritualistic Painting

In an age where art and ritual entwine, London-based artist Georgia Patten channels her vision through a personal and profound exploration of identity and myth. Her work, rooted in a fascination with religious iconography and classical artistry, transforms ancient forms into reflections on modern culture, gender, and collective spirit. With each brushstroke, she crafts a narrative of nourishment, community and reciprocity in a world that often forgets its artists.

Written by Christian Thevathasan
Published 11.11.2024

Izland Interview: Georgia Patten, Fine Artist and Painter

How did you first fall in love with the visual world of fine arts?

My love for the world of visual arts, particularly through paintings, comes from my childhood at a Roman Catholic school in London. We had to go to Mass a few times a week in this small chapel. It was always long and boring, and a little scary with the fire-and-brimstone sermons. I remember staring at the magnificent stained glass windows and wooden sculptures as the hours would pass and just thinking ‘how can such beautiful things be born out of something so austere?’ It was the artistic beauty, the craftsmanship and the visual narratives that were portrayed from perhaps not such beautiful tales that first captured my heart for classical art and fine paintings—this contrast between beauty and darkness was captivating.

Is there a particular era of art that resonates with you the most? In what way does it influence your style?

My love for art really started with that religious imagery in the chapel at school... As I got older I started looking at more art in churches and at the history of religious art. It always felt so dark and distant, but that changed when I came across Giotto’s fresco in Padua’s Scrovegni Chapel in Italy when I was about 12. I immediately fell in love with how majestic and bright it was, and how unlike a lot of religious imagery it still felt like part of this world. I thought ‘this is it’. The figures are so weighty and majestic and not at all like the otherworldly phantoms that we see up until that point. I later discovered that period as the Proto-Renaissance, and it's still very much a dark period in terms of religious imagery but it’s really when the Italians started to explore the brighter humanity within these darker ideas and motifs. Nearly all of my art is in some way influenced by religious themes, even when it’s turning those ideas inside out and criticising them. I do often reference antiquity to question more austere catholic ideals. Ancient Greek mythology is equally a fascinating lens for me to look through when thinking about what we consider to be right or wrong in modern society, and particularly how our ideas about gender roles have been shaped, informed and certainly warped by religious ideologies.

Who are among your favourite artists, painters and sculptors?

Giotto will always have a place in my heart, as will Duccio and Simone Martini, but over time I’vec really come to love more modern painters like CY Twombly, Marlene Dumas and, my absolute favourite, Paula Rego. When I first started to think about antiquity and how pagan ideology was the moral opposite to Catholicism, CY Twombly’s Bacchus series was like a welcome slap in the face. He has these monumental, blood-red abstract loops that perfectly capture this kind of rhythmic chaos, and it was so different from anything I had ever seen that had been done about mythology. Standing in that room surrounded by these vicious red swirls was a deeply visceral and emotive experience for me. It was around that time that I started to look at hedonism and women and, in particular, the Maenad as a figure to examine. Maenads were the female followers of Dionysus in Ancient Greece who were known to descend into a hypnotic, ritualistic frenzy in their worship of the god. These figures became central to my paintings, and were at the forefront of my mind when I first saw Paula Rego’s Dog Women series. Rego’s depiction of women became for me the culmination of everything I had been exploring: religious themes, quasi-mythological storytelling and gender roles. Her modelling of the human form prompted me to explore my own figurative work further... I can honestly say that drawing the human body is simultaneously the most frustrating and pleasurable experience I’ve ever had in my practice.

Your work and aesthetics are mostly expressed through intricate portraiture. What inspires you most when it comes to this practice?

Portraiture means many things to me. It has been a comfort when I have missed someone. It’s been a quick fix when I needed the cash. It’s been for the slightly awkward smile I receive when I gift one to a friend. In a very complicated way, portraiture is a way for me to figure out how I feel about someone. The process of looking at someone, really truly looking, can be transformative. I’ve had falling-outs with friends and family, and so the act of painting or drawing them, line by line and stroke by stroke allows me to access an empathy I may not have previously had. Portraiture can be a deeply tumultuous process. This is also true for self-portraiture, which is a lot of what I do. At the risk of sounding cliché, Frida Kahlo often said that she painted herself because she was the subject she knew best... That resonates with me a lot. If I’m not sure how I feel about something, I look in the mirror and I paint.

Are you more aesthetic and symmetrical or grotesque and provocative?

I think that while most of my work would be considered aesthetically appealing, there’s definitely an undercurrent of the grotesque or the abject. One of my paintings, Wuhan Angel was a close up of a nurse on the frontlines of the Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan. Her skin is smooth and her eyes are glassy, but the indents from her mask and goggles are sore and raw. Her baby hairs are stuck to her forehead and the bags under her eyes are swollen. There is always a push and pull between the obscene and the beautiful in my work, a contrast that reminds me of the darkness and divinity that exists in religious and Renaissance masterpieces.

What does your ideal or dream path look like as an artist?

Everybody wants to spend their time doing what they love, and I’m no different. If I could spend all day every day painting and working on new artistic projects I would... but young artists struggle in this day and age for a reason, and the financial care of artistic guilds and workshops is something we left in the 16th and 17th centuries. Part of why I did my Master's in History of Art is because I thought it would be an easier way into a more stable but still creatively based career—not the case. The art world has always been, and will always be, a dinner party (and not Judy Chicago’s) that many of us await on baited breath for an invite to. Unfortunately, not many of us do, and so what I would call for is more of a ‘farm’ than a dinner party. As artists, we need to look out for other artists rather than sharp-elbowing our way to a seat at that dinner party. There needs to be more of a sense of community, reciprocity, growth, and nurture... there needs to be a greater focus on care. This idea of care is actually something I want to work on as a new project. Something I’ve been thinking a lot about recently is food – think about the last time you went to a gallery or a museum, there was a cafe, wasn’t there? There always is. It’s because these artistic and cultural spaces are hubs of nourishment. Whether that nourishment comes from art or music or sculpture or books, it’s a space where people come to feel fed and feel full of culture. Yet... who cares for those that produce that art and that culture? Who feeds the workforce? This is ultimately what I am trying to explore: that idea of nourishment and care within an institution that, as I see it, does not provide nourishment to its unwavering, loyal and inspired nourishers. Just like Dionysus’ devoted Maenads, I will forever be devoted to nourishing myself and our collective with art.