Hello
My name is Patrick Boullier, an artist from Northern Ireland who focuses on black and white pen art. I started drawing patterns randomly and found it to be a tranquil way to pass the time. This hobby evolved from drawing geometric patterns and objects into filling A3 pages with a sporadic array of symbols. This progressed to my attempts to create artwork where every design and pattern is placed with a specific intention and meaning behind it. This has led to the time spent doing research for pieces far exceeding the time spent drawing the piece itself.
I still treat my doodles as a hobby, getting to work on them in my free time. However, after having a piece of art (Runestone of Memory) accepted into the 142nd Royal Ulster Academy of Arts annual exhibition in the Ulster Museum, Belfast, and receiving positive feedback and requests online to buy my work, I decided to create this website.
Influences
I tend to focus on areas of interest or images that may come to my minds eye (by whatever mechanism, like dreams for instance). Some influences are as follows:
Carl G. Jung
One of the topics that underpins nearly every piece that I have done is psychology. This comes mainly from reading the work inspired by, or directly by Carl G. Jung. Understanding that everything we perceive is “symbolic”, either personally or to the collective unconscious, is what led to my interest in doing art filled with symbols, overt or otherwise. Other aspects of Jung’s work that has always interested me was to do with the individuation process, specifically incorporating “the shadow” as well as the landscape of the psyche which he laid out.
Donald Hoffman
The work pursued by cognitive psychologist, Donald Hoffman, had an influence here too, as his research into our perception of reality and proposal that consciousness is fundamental (not space-time), has always interested me.
Sacred Number
Number may be one of the most deeply rooted symbols that we know of, and as such, I try to centre pieces of art around a single number, or a set of numbers when planning them. The most prevalent of these is the number 2, being that I pretty much exclusively work with two colours: black and white. Some of the conscious decisions I made regarding Sacred Number are detailed in the “more info...” sections, but much of it I leave to the observer to pick up on (consciously or not).
Sacred Geometry
Being aesthetically inclined toward symmetry and including a large number of patterns in my art, led to a lot of reading into sacred geometry. Geometric patterns are symbolic in themselves and I had always found artwork consisting solely of these patterns to be appealing, however, I prefer to juxtapose other symbols in contrast.
Golden Section/Mean/Ratio
The prevalence of the golden ratio, Phi, throughout art, nature, and the cosmos is indicative of how deeply rooted it is in our world. It is a seemingly universally pleasing ratio and so some of my pieces are filled with references and layouts dedicated to this, some very overt and explained, others not so much.
Albrecht Dürer
Being drawn to art consisting of black and white for whatever reason, Dürer is my favourite artist. I not only enjoy his style of art but also much of the subject matter he focused on: religion (particularly Eschatology) and nature.
Tool
The lyrics and motifs of the progressive-metal band, Tool, inspired some of the ideas for my art (as explained in the “more info...” sections). They are able to layer their music with multiple meanings, something I try to encapsulate through my drawings.
Alex Grey
I discovered Alex Grey via the album cover art he had produced for Tool and immediately liked it. In stark contrast to the Albrecht Dürer work that I like, it is his use of colour that makes his art. His images of transcendence and nature were influential to me.
- Alchemy
- Occult
- Hermeticism
- Mythology
- Religion
- Astronomy