Barnsley’s Patrick Murphy isn’t an artist to be pigeonholed.

He’s flown hundreds of brightly coloured birds around the world, immortalised Billy and Kes in steel, lit up South Yorkshire with poetic neon signs, fired a laser beam as the crow flies across Barnsley, and colour-bombed the East Front façade at Wentworth Woodhouse.

But the bigger picture is that he’s done all of this and more without flying his Darfield nest.

“You can leave Barnsley to try and make it as an artist, but why should you have to?” Patrick says.

“There’s an assumption that you’ve got to be in London if you’re an artist. You won’t make it anywhere else. At one point, if I said I was based in Barnsley I’d be given a certain look. But I get a kick out of it now.”

International curators have flocked to Patrick, commissioning large-scale bird-themed installations in France, Belgium, Canada and China. Closer to home, you’ll see his work at Elsecar in the form of a giant steel horse, the Kes sculpture in Hoyland Common, and neon installations on buildings around Barnsley town centre.

Patrick is the epitome of a multimedia artist, exploring different mediums so as not to clip his own wings. His work has a universal theme of issues that impact working class people. Belonging. Inclusion. The desire for happiness.

“The working class drove a lot of culture but are totally underrepresented these days. There was funding in my time, and I wouldn’t have gone to art college without it.”

Growing up on a council estate in Barnsley, Patrick was the only child of ex-paratrooper John and his wife Mabel, a nurse at Kendray Hospital.

John had moved back to Barnsley in the late ‘60s after years in America. He’d emigrated and joined the Big Red One, America’s first infantry division. John spent the 1960s in America’s Deep South; he was there when JFK was shot and MLK Jr campaigned for civil rights. He then moved to Brooklyn where he was a night manager for restaurant chain, Bickfords.

“He’d tell me stories of getting held up at gunpoint or recommending Welsh rarebit to the mafia boss Lucky Luciano. Dad had been around the world, but he still loved Barnsley the most. Staying in Barnsley is probably down to him.”

Patrick was raised on a diet of art and culture, consuming the work of Yorkshire artists David Hockney and Henry Moore. The Murphys’ living room was filled with books, including a stack sent by Germaine Greer after John wrote to her asking for recommendations.

John and Mabel devoted their time to Patrick and actively encouraged his love of art from a young age. As too did his teachers.

One of his earliest memories is being tasked with drawing his school, St Joseph’s in Kendray, when he was around seven.

“I was always fascinated by drawing and my teachers knew I was good at it.  One day I was given a big board and some paper and sent out onto the playing field to draw the building. It was the weirdest thing sat there looking back at my school. But I remember thinking how good it was to connect with people through my drawings.

“I concentrated on drawing that much that I lost interest in other subjects like maths. ‘I think the part of the brain responsible for creativity doesn’t usually excel at algebra.”

When he moved up to secondary school, St Michael’s in Athersley, teacher backing of his creativity continued and Patrick was encouraged to pursue being an artist after leaving school.

He won a place at Barnsley Art College, which was based in an old Victorian house on Churchfield. Patrick then went on to study art and design at the newly formed Sheffield College in the late 1980s.

Since then, Patrick has worked as a professional artist. He works from a studio in Barnsley town centre behind Cooper Gallery, the place which kick-started his career 25 years ago.

“The first big thing to happen in my career was a solo exhibition at the Cooper in 2000. It was a Herculean project based on urban landscapes, using old bus stop adshels. I collected 15 of them from a bus depot in London and had to shift them all in the back of a van before painting them.”

Various other large-scale installations followed. For ‘Volume’ in 2010, he calculated how many ballpit balls would be needed to fill public spaces like a telephone box at Elescar (1,600), a shop window on Eldon Street (10,890) and Emley Moor Mast (75,320).

He projected a larger-than-life whippet onto the façade of Cannon Hall Museum for ‘Red Dog’ transformed the front of Barnsley Council’s old headquarters with brightly coloured windows for ‘Strata’ and explored a forgotten industry for the ‘Barnsley Brick Project’.

But Patrick’s career really took flight in 2012 when he was commissioned to create a piece for Liverpool Biennial, an international art festival, after the curator had seen ‘Strata’.

Based on the festival’s theme of ‘Unexpected Guests’, aimed at raising awareness of homelessness, Patrick created ‘Belonging’, making 200 life-sized pigeons that would take over the city’s Walker Gallery.

The exposure from Liverpool Biennial led to more and more work across the globe. Patrick’s flock of pigeons have travelled to Soho, Belgium, British Colombia in Canada, and most recently Shanghai for a big Chinese art festival.

“I settled on pigeons because I love them, but people also hate them. Pigeons are a symbol of human struggle in finding acceptance. They search for a better sense of circumstances to achieve happiness. And birds have no language barrier. Everyone can relate to the natural world.

“The first piece is always your favourite as its such a learning curve. There’s nobody to teach you how to install public art on buildings. But I’ve got a put a great team together and thankfully nothing has ever fallen off. But we did have some pigeons stolen from Soho Square.”

In 2021, Patrick was commissioned to create a similar piece of art for Le Havre’s iconic City Hall building, a UNESCO world heritage site. With Le Havre being a French fishing port, Patrick opted for seagulls instead of pigeons.

Patrick had to meticulously plan where each of the 200 seagulls was going to be placed to complement the striking architecture of the building, including the 72-metre-tall clock tower.

Back home in Barnsley, the natural world has continued to influence Patrick’s work.

He worked with Anton Want to create graphic land art, a book and merchandise to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of Barry Hines’ book A Kestrel and a Knave. And last summer he unveiled his follow-up project, Billy and Kes, in Hoyland Common. The steel sculpture depicts the moment when Billy releases his beloved Kes.

“It’s across the road from Barry Hines’ old home and is a symbol of freedom and escape.”

Swapping feathered friends for foals, Patrick created the Dearne Valley Horse for a project with Discover Dearne inspired by the horses he saw at the end of his street while out on walks with his wife Tracey during the Covid pandemic.

Visitors to Wentworth Woodhouse may have seen Patrick’s ‘Neon Horse’, a modern interpretation of George Stubbs’ famous Whistlejacket painting.

And his most recent installation is ‘Industrious Revolutions’ down the road in Elsecar at the edge of the canal basin. The giant horse, fabricated in Corten steel, tells the story of Elsecar’s heritage and that of the Trans Pennine Trail.

Patrick’s design features a dog walker, cyclist, canal boat and train to represent the use of the TPT and surrounding area. Look closely and you’ll see a salmon, birds and a few cogs and wheels to represent the industrial revolution that fuelled the Fitzwilliam family’s wealth and power.

“I get ideas while out walking, sat in the bath, or when I wake up in the morning. It starts with sketches of my initial thought, then I’ll take it to the next stage through research, which accounts for around sixty percent of a project. This helps me form a connection to the surrounding area by understanding its heritage.

“For this project, I chose a horse for horsepower; a symbol of how important horses were to the Victorian times. The material was chosen for its industrial look to make sure it’s in-keeping with the heritage of the site.”

For his upcoming project ‘A Walk Around Town’, Patrick has delved into the world of augmented reality to bring a new dimension to his art. Working with fellow Darfielder, Ian McMillan, Patrick has created an AR sculpture for each of Barnsley’s six principal towns: Cudworth, Goldthorpe, Hoyland, Penistone, Royston and Wombwell.

Each high street will have a QR code that you can scan and a unique sculpture appears on your phone. Patrick and Ian hosted free workshops with the public to gather stories from which they designed a relevant sculpture for each town and a series of art maps. There are birds, lions and even a unicorn to find!

See more of Patrick’s work at www.patrickmurphystudio.co.uk