The Tool Bench marks my 50th canvas—completed exactly one year to the day after I finished my very first one. This piece is a tribute to work, memory, and the quiet corners where both creativity and responsibility live.
Drawn entirely freehand, it’s built like a snapshot of a lived-in workspace: mismatched tools, worn wood, scribbled reminders, and the little personal things that actually make a place yours. The clipboard holds a “Honey-Do” list that never seems to end. The Polaroid-style sketch of my wife sits taped to the wall like a reminder of why the work matters. The shadows on the back wall match the tools lying on the bench—suggesting a moment in progress, a task paused, life happening between motions.
In this memory-driven piece, Patmore reconstructs the bathroom from his third-grade elementary school, capturing the sterile brightness, the tiled repetition, and the institutional reminder to “WASH YOUR HANDS.”
But the scene is not pristine — a leaky sink, an out-of-order stall, and a taped-up sign reveal the quiet decay behind childhood places we assume were orderly and safe.
Patmore blends nostalgia with unease, transforming a simple restroom into a study of what it means to grow up: how the lessons we learn early (“hygiene,” discipline, responsibility) stay with us even after the walls begin to crack. The small pop of blue tape emphasizes the DIY fragility of rules meant to guide us.
This piece stands at the intersection of memory and maintenance — of spaces, of bodies, and of ourselves.
