Ben McDonald.
Bold colour, bold outline, full energy in the room. I’m one half of the fusion that makes Patricia Studios, and I’ve been chasing this since I was a fidgety kid with a colouring book. Motion.
Where It Started.
Ben Alex McDonald. BAM. Born and raised in Northampton.
I was a fidgety kid. Properly restless, couldn’t sit still for love nor money, so my mum kept handing me books. Colouring books, drawing books, doodling books. From young she was always getting me to paint, buying me things, pushing me off to art groups. That was my thing. It still is.
I wasn’t the maths-and-English kid. Never was. But put a brush or a pen in my hand at Abington Vale Primary, and I came alive. That was the one place a weird, restless kid was actually good at something. I love it. Absolutely love it, man.
My mum was the driving force, if I’m honest. She ignited the artist in me, but creativity runs throughout my family. My dad and grandparents were always there to encourage me, keeping me moving, creating, and exploring new ideas. If I was ever bouncing off the walls, someone would put a pen and paper in my hands, and I’d disappear into drawing for hours. Looking back, those simple moments laid the foundations for everything I do today.
The Bit Where It Got Serious.
My mum was the one who first ignited my passion for art. She encouraged it from the very beginning, and that passion followed me through primary school and eventually to Northampton School for Boys.
At Northampton School for Boys, I had a teacher, Mr Bradbury, who taught me from Year 7 all the way through to Year 11. A massive inspiration, not just as an artist, but in how to be a good man. He taught me how to paint and introduced me to the streets, blinded by the lights. Legend.
By sixth form, everything started to get serious, and that’s where I met Niamh. Thank God.
Same A-level Art class, same teacher. We’d stay behind after the bell had gone, just the two of us, tunes on, painting away. Seventeen, eighteen years old, both with our own struggles and things going on at home, and that art room became an escape.
And the funny thing is, that’s literally what we do now at twenty-six. Different room, same tunes.
I looked at an old photograph the other day, seven or eight years old, and there it was: I’d actually drawn Niamh as part of one of my school projects. We had no idea what was ahead of us. No idea we’d build a life, a relationship, and a business around art together.
But looking back, the whole thing feels strangely inevitable. It was all already there, sat quietly in that art room, waiting for us to catch up.
The Wilderness Years.
Then real life happened. I ended up at a property law firm, conveyancing, a desk job.
Lockdown hit and I got furloughed. Six, seven months of it. Bored out of my brain. Not seeing anyone. Going a bit crazy, honestly.
So I dug out my old sixth-form art and started painting again.
My neighbour Bill, Bill Edwards, God rest his soul, was a proper one-off. Eccentric London man, lived a cool life, told me he was a hippie for about a year, married to a beautiful Italian lady, two daughters, grandkids. I loved the man to bits.
He was a real artist too. Abstract, colourful, mad about music. He’d actually watched Jimi Hendrix live. His studio was the garage: art stacked at the back next to the lawnmower, paints up the wall, a worktop full of curiosities. He had me over for a beer and said, “Why don’t you paint Jimi Hendrix?”
So I did.
There’s an artist called Neil Shigley, an unreal artist, and I painted mine inspired by him. I did the black-and-white drawing, and Bill went, “Let’s add a splash of colour.”
Boom.
That’s probably where my whole thing comes from: the black outlines and then the colour. Two artists doing art in lockdown, in the sun.
He’s the reason I went and built a studio in my own garden. Massive thank you to my best mate Joe Heslop for making that dream a reality and helping build it.
Bill was the first person ever to buy my art. The Hendrix. Fifty quid, a pack of cigarettes, and some green Carlsbergs. I don’t even drink Carlsberg, but I thought, boom.
It’s still hanging in his living room to this day. Worth about seven hundred quid now.
And that was the hinge for me: if I can sell a painting for fifty quid, I can sell one for fifty grand.
After that, it just rolled.
I set up my Instagram page and started taking commissions. I drew a cow on my wall and have gone on to sell about ten cow paintings since. Sold another Hendrix on a guitar, got prints made of the first one and they sold too. Then came dog portraits, an art job, going solo on murals, and a first little workshop at Weston Favell Primary, every year group filing in to ask questions.
That was my first taste of the thing I do now.
I’ll be straight with you. I’ve been through some really dark patches.
After lockdown ended, I went to Northampton Uni to study Fine Art, then dropped out because my mum was ill. I dropped everything, but I never dropped art. I kept painting while caring for my mum.
She inspired me every day and made me want to keep creating.
Painting was like a safety boat. A life jacket, in a roundabout way. It gave me confidence, and it gave me purpose. Purpose was the thing I was lacking.
It still does that for me now.
Two of Us, One Bet.
Me and Niamh, life happened. We spent some time apart working various jobs. But importantly, we always kept creating. That never stopped.
Then one day I rang Niamh out of the blue and said I needed help painting a mural in a school. She came along and saved the day.
We flirted with the idea right there: why don’t we do this more often?
Then we painted Darling’s Barbers, our first proper job together, and it just went from there.
Then came the name.
We’ve got a ridiculous amount in common. Both our mums are called Patricia. We’re both Irish. We both have a seven in our birthdays. Both have a seven in our home addresses.
You can’t write that.
So the company became Patricia. Our mums’ name above the door.
I get goosebumps just telling you.
There’s no Ben without Niamh. She’s my partner in crime, my big sister, my therapist, not only my business partner but my best friend.
Patricia Studios was born.
This one’s for our mums.
My Half of the Fusion.
I’m still on a quest to find my style, which is sort of the point.
But I know what it is: colourful, loud, bold black outlines, a bit semi-abstract. Nostalgia and aesthetic. Art that makes you feel something or makes you smile.
Those black lines go all the way back to Bill and that first splash of colour.
My brain looks at something and goes, “That’d be a sick painting. Let’s make that.”
That’s my job in the duo: the ideas, the composition, the subject matter, knowing what to paint, what not to paint, and how to display it.
Niamh brings the realism, the execution, the flair. Honestly, I don’t think there’s anything she can’t do. I can’t do realism like she can.
Put the two together and you get the thing only the two of us make.
I’m a perfectionist and I won’t skimp. Best cans, best caps, crisp lines, and I bring the noise.
We’ve pulled all-nighters before now. We don’t leave a painting until we’re proud of it.
We’re artists, not painters and decorators.
Pay a premium, get a premium job.
No half-arsed work.
What It’s All For.
First and foremost, my mum. I’ll get to that.
It’s for Niamh’s beautiful mum too, who’s like my second mum. It’s also for Niamh herself. Niamh’s a mum now, and she’s absolutely iconic, juggling everything she does. And, of course, it’s for her little boy, Jacques.
Here’s the truth of it:
I do this to make my mum proud.
She handed me my first colouring book, and now the company carries her name.
Things have been hard for her lately, and what I want most is to get her into one of our workshops one day. Brush in her hand, the music on, the room buzzing, watching her light up doing the very thing she gave me.
Mum has battled with her mental health, and so have I.
From being a fourteen-year-old lad watching her struggle, to years where she wasn’t really there, to becoming her carer, it’s made me who I am.
Watching her come back from the lowest of lows and fight her way through has inspired me more than she’ll ever know.
It lit a fire in me to try and change the world through what I’m passionate about.
Her sparking my love for art helped me overcome so much, and I want to do that for as many people as I can.
If I can give somebody the feeling that art gave me, I’ll die a happy man.
This one’s for you, Mum. My best friend. My inspiration. I love you.
There’s Another Half to This Story.
Patricia Studios is me and Niamh. Two artists, two energies, one name over the door. Go and meet her, and find out why we’re both named after our mums.