Hardback, black and white illustrations, 145 pages, W150mm x H195mm
Patterson's work begins with the act of naming. What's in a name? In 1987, Patterson began a series of diptychs entitled 'Name Paintings': "The names are silk-screened in black ink on 'portrait' format, white primed canvases which stand in for the full-length figures," says the artist. "With [these] paintings, I was trying to evoke an image of the subjects in the minds eye of the viewer by means of words alone". Indeed, with these works, Patterson evokes not only the image, but also the vast set of significations which might, for any individual, be provoked by pairings such as Elizabeth Taylor/Richard Burton (1987) or Marquis de Sade/von Sacher-Masoch (1988).
For Patterson, each noun and pronoun contains an imaginative warehouse of possible connotations, associations, or meanings. Pointing at towards the arbitrary nature of all systems of naming and categorization, he reminds the viewer that the map-like the electrical circuit, the diagram, or, indeed, words themselves-is always already a representation, an abstraction which as such cannot hope to perfectly present the reality it seeks to portray.