Patrice Moor on her show of hands of Somerville’s staff and students

My exhibition, Many Hands, reflects a slice of life at Somerville College over a year.

I have painted a series of hands of a cross-section of the community: a porter, the librarian, an alumni, a child from the nursery, the bursar, the principal, two gardeners, a chef, some fellows and of course some students.

I obtained my residency at Somerville by approaching the principal, Alice Prochaska, and asking whether the college would be interested. After meeting the librarian/archivist Anne Manuel and the bursar Andrew Parker, the proposal was further discussed and then taken to governing body, who were very supportive. They felt it would add to college life, be relevant and interesting.

My work has been influenced by being in Oxford and I am glad about that.

I have found Oxford an extremely stimulating place and it has broadened my horizons, given me confidence, more of a sense of what I want to do with my work and where I can take it and where it can take me.

Somerville College has been an incredibly exciting, interesting and welcoming to work in and with.

Residencies have become, over the years, my preferred way of working. I thrive in that environment and value the communication between an artist and an institution.

This residency has been the most interactive one so far. There has been a great deal of interest and support in my work and I have thoroughly enjoyed immersing myself in the community of Somerville over the year I have been there.

I live and work in London and spend a day or two on average in Oxford.

After quite a few years of painting my children and portraits, I started to paint some still lives which turned out to be rather successful commercially.

Originally I studied history and then law before becoming a painter. I began my artistic career by accident, rather than design. In 1993 I was about to start an MA in Law at the London School of Economics but my twins were born and I didn’t want to leave them. I began to draw and sketch them and after a year I became so engrossed with painting that I turned down my place at LSE to devote myself to bringing up my children and becoming an artist.

Soon after that I obtained my first commission for a portrait.

In 2010 I came to a crossroad and felt I had to paint subjects that were no necessarily going to be so commercial. This was a turning point for me as an artist and I started this new phase by devoting myself to painting the same human skull every day for just over a year. This culminated in an installation of 252 small skull paintings entitled Tete de Mort.

This was the start of my really finding my feet as an artist and having more of a sense of my areas of interests and themes and having the courage to pursue issues of mortality, physicality and humanity. These interests are broad and therefore give me plenty of scope to approach different residencies.

‘Many Hands’ by Patrice Moor is at Somerville College, Oxford, now and until the start of the next academic year