Jim Pattison RSA was born in Dundee and studied Architecture for a year at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and then Drawing and Painting (1974-1979). Pattison taught in schools in Edinburgh, Dundee and Glasgow from 1980 until 1989, subsequently teaching Fine Art at DoJ (1990-2012).
Pattison's employed a range of autographic and digital media to manipulate images and information. In his series Translations, Pattison made visual responses to personal experiences of renal failure, dialysis and kidney transplantation. He also spent time investigating ways in which tartans were designed and assigned, suggesting new ways of designing tartan setts using information from family history and DNA.
