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 work employs 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. Recently he has investigated ways in which tartans have been designed and assigned and suggested new ways of designing tartan setts using information from his family history and from his own DNA.