Patrick Boullier
Patrick Boullier is an artist from Northern Ireland who focuses on densely detailed, intricately designed, symbolic pen drawings.
Patrick pursued art at younger ages but abandoned studying it formally at A Level to pursue further studies of Mathematics at Queen's University Belfast. His interest in the subject returned when passing down time while working in the Ward Park Bowls kiosk, drawing geometric patterns and doodling randomly. This evolved into filling A3 pages with a sporadic array of symbols. Finally progressing into 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.
Reluctant to refer to himself as an "artist", Patrick still treats his doodles as a hobby, getting to work on pieces in his free time. After having a piece (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 his work, he started his website where most of his works can be purchased.
Themes and Influences
Psychology
Carl G. Jung
One of the topics that underpins nearly every one of his pieces is psychology. This came mainly from reading works inspired by, or directly by, Carl G. Jung. Understanding that everything we perceive is “symbolic”, either personally or to the collective unconscious, is what ultimately led to Patrick's interest in the power of symbols, overt or otherwise.
Jung's landscape of the psyche, his work on the process of "individuation", with it's alchemical metaphors, can be also found within many of Patrick's pieces. Finally, what Jung is (arguably) most well know for: his work on archetypes and how this ties into mythology, is a topic that can be seen in many of Patrick's pieces.
Donald Hoffman
The work pursued by cognitive psychologist, Donald Hoffman, has influenced some of Patrick's pieces directly, but pervades most of his work. Hoffman's research into our perception of reality and proposal that consciousness is fundamental (not space-time) has been of particular interest. His hypotheses not only tie into the ever more popular "simulation theory" argument of reality, but far older Hermetic principles, which Patrick attempts to capture within his pieces.
Sacred Number
Number may be one of the most deeply rooted symbols that we know of, and as such, Patrick tries to centre pieces of art around a single number, or a set of numbers when planning them. The most prevalent of these is the quite clearly the number 2, being that he almost exclusively works in two colours: black and white. Whilst sacred number has been the igniting idea behind some of Patrick's pieces (e.g. Beyond the Lines of Reason"), nearly every single piece has had these ideas consciously included. Removing any deeper meaning behind this topic, designs based on sacred number are simply aesthetically pleasing to the human eye.
Sacred Geometry
Being aesthetically inclined toward symmetry and including a large number of patterns in his art, this enticed Patrick to read further into sacred geometry (along with the other three classical liberal arts). Geometric patterns are symbolic in themselves and he had always found artwork consisting solely of these patterns to be appealing, however, preferring to juxtapose other symbols within these patterns to contrast or emphasise.
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 Patrick attempts to capture this in many of his pieces with references and layouts dedicated to this ratio, some very overt and explained, others not so much.
Albrecht Dürer
Being drawn to the simplicity of art consisting of black and white, Dürer is Patrick's favourite artist. Inspiration has been gained from not only Dürer's style of art but also much of the subject matter that he focused on: Christian symbolism (particularly Eschatology) and nature.
Tool
The lyrics and motifs of the progressive-metal band, Tool, directly inspired some of the ideas for Patrick's art (the piece "Beyond the Lines of Reason" taking influence from the song Lateralus and the piece "Unus Mundus" being loosely based around the song 46&2). They are able to layer their music with multiple meanings, something Patrick tries to encapsulate through his drawings.
Alex Grey
Discovering Alex Grey via the album cover art he had produced for Tool, Patrick took an immediate liking to it's fractal and spiritual imagery. In stark contrast to the Albrecht Dürer work, it is his use of colour that makes Grey's art. His images of transcendence and often neglected spiritual nature of life were influential to Patrick in many works.
- Alchemy
- Occult
- Hermeticism
- Mythology
- Religion
- Cosmology
- Christianity