Patricia Larter (1936–1996) was born in the UK and arrived in Australia with her artist husband Richard Larter in 1962. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s she collaborated with Larter on a series of experimental and innovative audio, film and video art works. In the 1970s she created several performance works, and established the performance troupe, Maholy Utzon Ragaistic Band. Pat Larter was the subject of many of her husband’s paintings; in this one, she poses in front of an earlier Larter painting. Richard Larter’s work was the subject of a major retrospective at the National Gallery of Australia in 2008. Pat also worked as a painter, and she had many solo exhibitions throughout the 1990s.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of Patrick Corrigan AM 2008
© Richard Larter/Copyright Agency, 2021
Pat Painting No 1 is of performance artist Pat Larter, with another female face behind her, made by Pat’s husband, Richard Larter in 1983. The portrait is in synthetic polymer paint on canvas, and measures about 1.8 m tall by 1.25 m wide, and is surrounded by a light-coloured wooden frame.
A bold and dynamic background surrounds the two figures. It is made from a geometric patchwork assemblage of many brightly-coloured and contrasting striped segments, including; pink, purple and blue; orange, blue and white; and green, purple and yellow.
The two women are rendered in vibrant colour and multidirectional lines, textures and patterns. Their faces occupy the full top half of the image. In the foreground Pat Larter faces us directly, her bare chest filling the lower part of the painting. The edges of her shoulders, as well as her breasts, are cropped and not in view. Behind Pat, on our right, appears another woman. The right side of her head and chest are partially obscured by Pat’s image and she gazes out to her left and beyond the frame.
The hair of the woman behind Pat is painted in hatched diagonal yellow lines arranged on top of her head, featuring a dark brown section towards the front. She has almond-shaped, light brown eyes beneath thin penciled eyebrows, and a rounded nose. The shadows on both sides of her face and neck are detailed in pale brown hatched lines. Her full lips are pursed into a pucker, painted a vivid crimson red, the colour matching a glimpse of the garment covering her left shoulder. Around her neck is a necklace of small round yellow beads.
Pat Larter is created with the same lines, made into cross-hatched patterns, but rendered with more delicacy. Her straight dark hair is cropped short. It is textured with evenly spaced horizontal, vertical and diagonal hand-applied lines in black, blue, and pink. Wisps of fringe point downward to fine eyebrows, arching above her eyes. The bold blue colour of Pat’s eyes dazzle against the complex patterns, matched in intensity by her red lips. The lips are parted to reveal seven white, evenly spaced, lower teeth. Her tongue curls around her upper teeth to touch her top lip in the centre. Her neck is adorned in a long necklace of large, round, white beads.
Audio description written by Meredith Hughes and voiced by Lucie Shawcross, 2021
Patrick Corrigan AM (123 portraits)
On one level The Companion talks about the most famous and frontline Australians, but on another it tells us about ourselves: who we read, who we watch, who we listen to, who we cheer for, who we aspire to be, and who we'll never forget. The Companion is available to buy online and in the Portrait Gallery Store.
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