January 25 2010

Artist Patricia Cain has won acclaim recently for an alternative approach to beauty, one that "catches places in the moment."

It was the demolition of granary buildings at Glasgow Harbour, that first caught Cain's attention in an effort to document the changing face of the Clyde. "I am drawn to complex structures in landscape or machinery, a wide variety of things not particularly human." Cain adds. "A bit of scaffolding isn't that interesting but a site that has some fairly elaborate construction or engineering going on is not found very often."

This has proven to be a fruitful artistic hunting ground for Cain who first won a Glasgow School of Art competition to have a painting hang alongside a Lowry depiction of Princes Dock in the Transport Museum and who has now won the Aspect Prize for a depiction of Zaha Hadid's work in progress.

"At the time I was interested in being an artist in residence during the construction process", Cain recalls. "I have been in touch with Hadid's team and they know about the Aspect prize, but we haven't met".

Cain reveals: "At the Mackintosh school they lament the fact that students turn to the PC before they turn to paper, your using software as design tools. The problem with software is it restricts what you can do. As an architect or designer your straightjacketed in ways, you are not with drawing."

The problem with drawing is that the skill isn't learned unless emphasis is placed on it by the course. Very often people will shy away from using those skills when people haven't been taught. Certainly in fine art people aren't being taught to paint and draw as they once were and so we've got people having to teach themselves basic skills, not just painting and drawing but how to present work, how to frame a picture, how to conserve a drawing, very basic things. The reason for that is concept has overtaken skill in priority.

"There's a very intense process of observation you have to follow when drawing which you don't get when sitting in front of a computer. The thinking that goes on when you make something by hand is of a different nature."

Cain's success is all the more remarkable for coming on the back of a late career switch, a move that was far from straightforward as Cain reveals.

"It's far more difficult than I envisaged to stop being a lawyer and actually become an artist.  Not least because at that point I was a single mother with two children with financial obligations to think about. The transition took maybe ten years during which time I had to sell a small practice employing eight people, move to Scotland, qualify as a Scottish lawyer so I could work part time but the practice I was working for weren't keen on me coming in two days a week, so I had to give it up. That was the worst moment because I was really giving up. During the Phd was probably the most difficult time because there was very little financial structure to anything. So the prize has given me support for all the hard decisions I've had to make.

"People are complex, there is always more than one side to somebody."

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