Steve Patterson is an author, woodcarver and folklorist who works in an off-grid shack in an old granite quarry in west Cornwall. He is an auto-didactic outsider researcher, meta-antiquarian and artificer of strange and wonderful things. He is a devout animist and anti-positivist and his method of approach swings between the romantic and the surreal. He has an enduring fascination with the relationship between Art, Magic and the Landscape …this ‘holy trinity’ forms the basis if his work.
He is has studied folklore and the lore of magic ever since he can remember. In addition to writing books, tracts and monographs on the subject he has also appeared in television and radio broadcasts given many talks and presentations. He gives regular guided walks through the Cornish landscape, walking the old track ways and telling the old stories. He is also a woodcarver and has been working with experimental music since the 1980s using harp, flute, found sounds and analogue synthesis.
He has been involved with the museum of Witchcraft and Magic in Boscastle - North Cornwall since the mid-1990s. He also has instigated a number of projects attempting to bridge this gap between art, magic and the landscape. The formula is to create a space, evoke the appropriate influences, gather a band of like-minded folk, apply a ‘gentle and steady heat’ and see what emerges.
In 2012/13 he set up the Helston Antiquarian and Arcane society which facilitated a series of cross disciplinary talks and happenings exploring the spirit of the landscape around the lizard. In 2014/15 he set up the “Tarot and the creative imagination project” in which he explored the magical use of symbols and automatism in the creative process, and in 2016/17 he initiated and co-ran the “Ancient scent project” in which a number of artists, performers, sorcerers and creative folk worked in Lamorna valley in the far west of Cornwall, drawing directly on the landscape and the surreal creative techniques which informed the surrealist and occultist Ithell’ Colquhoun’s work, culminating in an exhibition in Lamorna and a residency in Ireland and a final exhibition in the ruins of the artist Robert Lenkiewicz’s old library in Plymouth. In 2017/18 he set up the “…Near the river of Antre project” which sought to directly evoke the Genii locus of the inner landscape around the site of the ruins of ‘Glasney college’ …which was once the spiritual hub of Cornwall …all of which mixed magic, surrealism, folklore and set them to work in the creative cauldron of the landscape.
As well as producing a body of writings, artworks, woodcarvings an sound pieces he has worked with the “Folklore tapes”, appearing on several tapes, publications, exhibitions, albums and performances, and collaborating with them on their 2019 “Art of Magic” project which sought to conjure up re imaginings of lost artefacts from the “Museum of witchcraft and magic” of which only their enigmatic labels remain.
The focus of his work at present (2021) is on the conjuring in to being of the “MUSEUM OF MAGIC AND FOLKLORE – WEST CORNWALL” and the creation and dissemination of the “ANTIQUARIAN ADVENTURES IN META-REALITY” podcast.
He is has studied folklore and the lore of magic ever since he can remember. In addition to writing books, tracts and monographs on the subject he has also appeared in television and radio broadcasts given many talks and presentations. He gives regular guided walks through the Cornish landscape, walking the old track ways and telling the old stories. He is also a woodcarver and has been working with experimental music since the 1980s using harp, flute, found sounds and analogue synthesis.
He has been involved with the museum of Witchcraft and Magic in Boscastle - North Cornwall since the mid-1990s. He also has instigated a number of projects attempting to bridge this gap between art, magic and the landscape. The formula is to create a space, evoke the appropriate influences, gather a band of like-minded folk, apply a ‘gentle and steady heat’ and see what emerges.
In 2012/13 he set up the Helston Antiquarian and Arcane society which facilitated a series of cross disciplinary talks and happenings exploring the spirit of the landscape around the lizard. In 2014/15 he set up the “Tarot and the creative imagination project” in which he explored the magical use of symbols and automatism in the creative process, and in 2016/17 he initiated and co-ran the “Ancient scent project” in which a number of artists, performers, sorcerers and creative folk worked in Lamorna valley in the far west of Cornwall, drawing directly on the landscape and the surreal creative techniques which informed the surrealist and occultist Ithell’ Colquhoun’s work, culminating in an exhibition in Lamorna and a residency in Ireland and a final exhibition in the ruins of the artist Robert Lenkiewicz’s old library in Plymouth. In 2017/18 he set up the “…Near the river of Antre project” which sought to directly evoke the Genii locus of the inner landscape around the site of the ruins of ‘Glasney college’ …which was once the spiritual hub of Cornwall …all of which mixed magic, surrealism, folklore and set them to work in the creative cauldron of the landscape.
As well as producing a body of writings, artworks, woodcarvings an sound pieces he has worked with the “Folklore tapes”, appearing on several tapes, publications, exhibitions, albums and performances, and collaborating with them on their 2019 “Art of Magic” project which sought to conjure up re imaginings of lost artefacts from the “Museum of witchcraft and magic” of which only their enigmatic labels remain.
The focus of his work at present (2021) is on the conjuring in to being of the “MUSEUM OF MAGIC AND FOLKLORE – WEST CORNWALL” and the creation and dissemination of the “ANTIQUARIAN ADVENTURES IN META-REALITY” podcast.
© Steve Patterson 2023
