millionaire ART DÉCOR

The art of Patricia Millns

Painting
her own script

Step into Patricia Millns’ artistic world where she

paints using her own script in symbols, where the
Middle East becomes more decipherable. She speaks
to Millionaire about everything – from headgear to
Sufi mysticism – to bring home the point that all
art is life

text Shalini Seth

photographs Santosh Bala

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 A n encounter with Patricia Millns is like being
a part of one of her paintings or installations
– it’s interactive. She draws you into her world,
engages you in conversation, making sure you
understand what pauses and empty spaces mean. She counter-
questions, taking care to ensure that the words used are precise,
falling in their designated spaces to achieve what she set out
to create.
“Getting dressed and you coming here is an event. It’s an art
event. The choice you make in your clothing, the questions you
are asking me… the rings I wear… it’s all an event. Each part
of the day is as relevant. To me it is not like this is work and
this is play. It all has to be one. It has to be just living your life,”
Millns says.
She has messages woven into most of her work, including the
500 guthras (traditional Middle Eastern men’s head-covering)
that she is painting for the Dubai International Financial
Centre’s Gulf Art Fair.
Never mind that it is in a script of her own creation. She paints
everything from clothes to shoes and everyday objects because
“not everybody responds to an art work. They are nervous. What
should I feel? Should I feel? What do I do? This way, you are part
of it. You can touch it.”
Millns will identify the symbol for the full stop at the end of
the symbol for the paragraph, but no more than that. “I don’t
want anyone to fully understand. The whole idea is that you
don’t know what it says… it will spoil everything if you knew.
Then the magic’s gone. Then I wouldn’t have people questioning
the work. Then you would just walk by, read it and walk out,”
she says. The Middle East is a spiritual base as well. “As I became more
Through conversational passages, pauses and challenges, you and more interested in Sufi mysticism, I realised objects are not
are drawn into her world anyway. “All these are in my script,” important. The object is only to get you through something. So,
Millns says of the 500 guthras. “This is a whole piece. I love just the surface captures your eye, but it takes you through to what is
the white. I love the simplicity, which is why I chose guthras beyond the object, beyond the surface.
to do this piece. This dissolves your identity. So you talk to the “When you think of Sufi mysticism, the surfaces are used to
person and not to the clothing. reflect a feeling. And so I use the object to get me through. I am
Talismans and a fascination with calligraphic art and still tied to objects – I come from a culture of objects. But as I
traditional clothing are not incidental. The artist – whose works grow, the objects become less and less important. They make life
can be seen in public collections in the United Kingdom at easier, but you go beyond them,” Millns says.
the British Museum, British Council, Royal Commonwealth
Society and Sainsbury Collection; in the United States at the
United Nations and UNIFEM; and in the Middle East at the “You involve yourself with
National Museum Collections of the UAE, Kuwait, Oman and
Jordan – counts Prince Charles amongst her numerous patrons. your clothing – it becomes
“I have also done a piece where I have used the poetry of Sheikh
Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime an event. if it’s not about
Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, for him. I did a piece for
Prince Charles which had his poetry,” says Millns. She exhibits making a statement, what
internationally but has retained a studio base in the Middle East
for the past more than 25 years. are we doing here?”

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Having travelled across Europe, South Asia, America and
Arabia, the artist is a wanderer of sorts. “My work is not just
here. I show in other countries. I use a lot of references from
other countries because it is from my reference point. It is in my
head – things that I have. I was very influenced from an early
age by Celtic art. I was born in England but grew up in Ireland.
I felt this was my culture. I loved Celtic art, the mysticism,”
she explains.
Until she came here. “The Middle East keeps me. There is
something about the Middle East that has made me feel very
much at home, ever since I first arrived. When I first flew into
Kuwait, when I saw my first dune, I felt like I was coming home.
It’s always been like that, it’s like a spiritual base. It’s a very
stimulating place.”
Coming to the region where calligraphy has always been
an art form was the next step, and not just geographically. “I
always loved the idea of putting the word in my painting. So
the word became an image. The Middle East has always treated
calligraphy as one of the highest arts. It is also a culture where
there is no representational tradition. Most of my influences
“It’s all art. It’s all life. It’s all art. Because my work is me. Someone
asked me if there was anything people don’t know about. I said,
look at the work. If you look at it, it’s like me being in Ireland,
that’s me being in Arabia and that’s me being older, wanting
simplicity. That’s me being more passionate. That’s it. What am
I hiding?”
are architectural, the
repeated imagery
of Islamic art. By
repeating an image
you actually go
through an image,”
Millns says.
The time – and
mind-space that
one commonly
refers to as culture
shock seems to have
been reversed. “I come from
a culture of representational art
in Europe and I came to a culture of non-
representation. You could go straight into abstraction. It was so
liberating! You did not have to go back to trying to reproduce
some sort of reality. The reality was the abstract. It was the word,
what the word signified. So I have stayed, and I love it,” she says,
her hands dancing expressively, expansively.
She says, “Studying iconography (mediaeval illumination and
early Celtic manuscripts) led to the study of early Islamic period.
This developed onto an understanding of the richness of Islamic
script and the complexity and repetition of imagery and motifs
within Islamic architectural systems. This forms an important
element and inspiration to my work.”
The abstract was reinforced as one of the themes of Millns’ life
when she lost all her possessions in the first Gulf war. She does
not miss the objects. “At various stages in my life, I have lost all
my objects. Then, you just start again. It doesn’t matter. Even
if I lost everything today, it doesn’t matter. You just start again.
After the Gulf war I just had one bag. I had been travelling so
I didn’t have any of my jewellery with me and I always like to
wear rings. I didn’t have a watch. And it didn’t matter. Because
you accumulate again,” she says.
You will find her at various events in the region, always dressed
in black, mostly by Issey Miyake. “That is the first time I saw
clothing that was like an artwork that you fitted into. I have
worn this jacket as trousers. I have worn it as a scarf. I can turn
it upside down and wear it as a jacket with a huge collar. For the
first time, I saw artwork that I could go inside. I saw clothing that
was fit to the viewer. And they have never let me down. I just
love clothes that are artwork that you blend in. It’s not done by
sizing. A large woman, a small woman – all can wear the same
piece. It just becomes different things depending on the person
that is inside it. Miyake had the philosophy of APOC – a piece
of cloth. Take a piece of cloth and you can do anything. You
involve yourself with your clothing – it becomes an event. And
if it’s not about making a statement, what are we doing here?”
Millns says. >
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 Little bottles on a shelf covered with a thin curtain reminiscent
of an apothecary’s cupboard draw you to them. “It is one of my
installations,” Millns says.
“Take a bottle,” she says as I peer a little closer trying to see inside.
“Each one has a message...an inspiration...a poem. They are like
messages thrown into the ether like bottles thrown into the sea.”
“How do people react to these,” I ask her.
“I am not responsible for the viewers response or even if they open
the bottles. It is not about that they are my thoughts and poems
they are not created for the viewer or the reader. To pen the
bottle is a personal choice like the reaction to an art work that is
a personal choice...not my directive. The piece will still work even
if the bottles are not opened. it intrigues even more...it conjures
other images of tinctures and healing liquids arranged on shelves.
Years ago when was walking on an beach in Oman I found a
message in a large glass jar. I could not read the Arabic script. I
was intrigued by this and the whole mystique of the event. I never
forgot this...This is my response to that event to the serendipity of
the unknown...”
“I love the idea of a hidden message of leaving it to the elements
to decide if it is found opened and read or if nobody does. That is
more important than the messages...”

She has an artist’s appreciation of men’s traditional headgear.
“When this is on a man’s head, he stands differently. A man
would slouch, but when you wear this, you have to hold your
head up, because if you slouch it comes off. The clothing makes
you elegant.”
Restrictions are not only those that are placed by others – they
can also be a choice. “I am wealthy in a non-monetary way. I
feel very privileged that I made a choice early to paint and travel.
I just left one day because I felt so restricted by a conventional
lecturing job and the daily routine of a regular commitment.
That is when I said I am going to live a life without personal
restriction. One shouldn’t place personal restrctions upon
oneself. I do what I do. If I sell, I make money. If I don’t, I don’t.
If I don’t worry it comes. I really believe that it does because
its importance diminishes,” she says encapsulating her work
of 30 years.
A great believer in doing things naturally, even for art’s sake,
Millns works out of her studio in Dubai and another, smaller one
in Oman. “I visit Kuwait a lot. But I don’t really have a studio
there. But if I need to work and do things, I always find space.
Space always presents itself. You need to find space, somebody
offers you space. It just comes. Always. If it’s the right thing to
do,” she says.
But which of these is home? “Home is where I am working.
Home is where I am. Home is somebody else’s concept. I never
left home. I don’t miss home. You bring home with you. So I am
home wherever I am,” she says.
“Creating pictures in not the same thing as being an artist.
Anyone can be taught to paint; you cannot be taught to be
an artist. Being an artist is about expression – you can do it
by dancing, you can do it by creating a great garden. It’s an
intellectual pursuit. It is not the creation of objects. ”
Those who have watched a child grow, and leave, can
understand what an artist would feel while parting with a painting.
“The action is much more important than the object. That is why
you can sell a painting. It ceases to be important for the creator
once it is painted. Then it has some importance to the viewer.
So it’s only a step to go on to the next one. Each work leads
to the next work,” Millns says. And it is about communication.
At this time, and for some time now, it is the colour red that is
running through her work. “It is only when you experince the
work the way you see them that they become interesting. The
way you feel the red, you are excited by the colour. Then the
artwork is alive. If you don’t see them, I couldn’t describe them
on the phone. As I grow older, red is the colour of strength, of
passion, what I feel about my life at the moment. Life is for living.
And I love the passionate intensity of the colour. And red, when
people look at it, actually makes your heart beat slightly faster,
like blue makes you slightly calmer – actually, physically calmer.
I love red. I just love the warmth.”
Having said that, “colour to me is just colour. My work is my
life. I use a simple, minimalist palette. My work is my life and
as I get older, possibly more mature. Simlicity in all things is of
prime importance.

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