Artist Patrick Eugène’s practice explores ancestry, migration, and memory. Working across painting and sculpture, his work is rooted in an ongoing dialogue between past and present.

Patrick started painting at 27 after experiencing burnout while working as a banker. What began as a reprieve soon blossomed into a new career. His early experiments with figuration gave way to a decade of abstraction, during which he experimented with materials like liquid rubber and latex, finding inspiration from artists such as Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, and Jackson Pollock.

Patrick returned to figuration during the pandemic, bringing the fluidity and emotional resonance of his abstract works to his portraits. The figures in his large-scale compositions are caught in moments of quietude and contemplation. Underlying Patrick’s practice is an understanding of art as a form of inheritance. His work asks what survives migration, what one generation leaves for another, and how one honors the past while simultaneously making way for the future.

In this episode, Elodie sits down with Patrick to discuss his unconventional path from finance to art, the role of family and community in shaping his practice, his collaboration with Dior for the Lady Dior Art Project, and more.

A conversation on ancestral memory, inheritance, and home as space of refuge.

05:03 — Patrick's relationship to Haiti

17:16 — How burnout led to a new career

29:11 — On abstraction, figuration and following creative instincts

36:09 — On navigating the art world

39:23 — Patrick's collaboration with Dior

Patrick Eugène is a painter and sculptor. His work has been featured in exhibitions across the U.S. and internationally. He is among the first inductees into the Qatar Airways Creative 100 and is a board member of the non-profit Bati School, an initiative committed to sustainability growing Ayiti’s future through farm-funded education. His work is held in the collections of the High Museum of Art, the Mead Art Museum, The Dean Collection, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.

For more, follow the show on Instagram @permanentdaydream.