Rudi Patterson: Visions of Colour

From Duckenfield to Notting Hill

Patterson was born in 1933 in rural Duckenfield, in the western parish of St Thomas, Jamaica, and educated in the island's capital Kingston.

Village life, the imposing mountains, lush flora and vegetation, vivid colours, magnificent trees and rivers, would many years later form the key inspiration for his painting.

Within a few years of arriving penniless in London, from late colonial Jamaica, Patterson had established himself as an artist, model, stage and film actor, appearing in early editions of Z Cars, The Professionals, The Rolling Stones' film ‘Sympathy for the Devil’, and repertory theatres up and down the country.

Patterson gradually found his own unique and consistent painting style.

It was an idealised and romanticised dream of the Jamaican countryside of his childhood, created in distinctly non-tropical London.