All from Life: Paintings by Pat Porter

Clare Hall is delighted to present a new exhibition – All from Life: Paintings by Pat Porter. The exhibition will be open for public viewing Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm.

About the artist

PAT PORTER (1944-2022) was a British artist whose focus was working from life. Her primary medium was oil on canvas, mostly centred on still life in her studio. Porter’s practice ran for nearly six decades, during which time she pushed into various modes of expression, beyond the overtly figurative. This is the first exhibition of Porter’s work in an institution. What unifies the work is that it is all from life.

Porter was born in Wellingborough, her artistic skills noticed and encouraged by a teacher. She won a place at the Slade in London, the first in her family to go to university. Porter loved her time at the Slade, particularly her tutorials with William Coldstream. She would remember fondly her hours spent at the Courtauld, then located in Portman Square, sitting on leather couches in front of works by Cezanne.

At the Slade, she met Tony Porter, her future husband. When they both had finished college, they moved to rural Northamptonshire and soon began their family: Sarah, Sophie, Charlie and Chlöe. For Porter, artmaking ran alongside homemaking. She would say she felt strange if, during a day, she hadn’t made art. As well as works on canvas, she would sketch constantly, in notebooks, or on whatever scrap of paper was lying around.

Porter’s work was always from life, never from photograph. In the 20th century, her expression was figurative, capturing what was in front of her. She enjoyed challenge, setting herself complex puzzles of form within her still-life tableaux. Her paintings were of things that mattered to her, whether it be bowls made by people she knew, flowers that she or Tony had grown, or food that she loved: cheese, fruit. There were landscapes too, always painted on location in places of meaning to her: Lyme Regis, Suilven in the Highlands, Paxton in the Scottish Borders, Norfolk.

Her work was never properly exhibited in her lifetime, which caused her great sadness and frustration. The family could never escape financial precarity. And yet she kept making work. In the 21st century, she broke into fresh territory, as if she was painting the presence of what was in front of her. These works may appear abstract, but she hated that word. They are all painted with the same rigour and concentration as her figurative works, always from life. She died unexpectedly, at a time in her work that felt like a beginning.

-Charlie Porter, journalist and author

Useful information

• Accessibility details: full step-free access, accessible toilet, lift. For accessibility queries, please email our Porters.
• Queries can be directed to Fiona Blake, Secretary of Clare Hall Art Committee.
• Discover more about art at Clare Hall via this page.