Patricia Millns

Message Sequences panel detail, mixed media on canvas with gold leaf

Front cover: Message Sequences, triptych centre panel, mixed media on canvas with gold leaf, 1m x 1m.

Patricia Millns was born in England in 1950. During her early art training in Northern Ireland, she became strongly influenced by Celtic art with its rich use of calligraphy and iconographic imagery, and this proved to be a sound background for the non-representational mixed-media works that she has developed over 15 years of living and painting in the Middle East (Kuwait and Oman). Her new works, Message Sequences, featured here in Banipal, show “communication in signs”. “Motifs taken from their fixed context and cultural reality,” Patricia Millns explains, “are extended to form a valid sign system, a linguistic unit.” They convey “information beyond the range of language, these fundamental linguistic units have been extended and moved beyond their original aesthetic external appearance. Used in place of words they are a systematic means of communication to represent a complex idea.” In an earlier group of paintings entitled Talisman Sequences that were part of a touring exhibition to Arab capitals, the UK and USA in 1999 and 2000 she focused on cultural symbols very much a part of Omani social landscape. She has held a number of solo exhibitions in the UK, London, San Francisco, and Kuwait; and participated in group exhibitions in the Oman, UAE, Egypt, China, France, Italy, Portugal, Austria, and the USA. She is an honorary member of the Omani Society of Fine Art. In March 2001 she received an award for her work shown at the Cairo International Biennale.

Message Sequence panels 70 x 70 cm, mixed media on canvas with gold leaf