Patricia F. Arnett was a West Bromwich‑born artist who trained at the Slade School of Fine Art after earlier study at the Memorial School of Art. At the Slade she was awarded the Richardson Scholarship and First Prize for Design and Drawing, marking her out as a technically accomplished student.
In 1940, aged seventeen, she was commissioned to paint a series of murals for West Bromwich Central Library illustrating Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. She completed further civic mural work in the 1940s and went on to exhibit regularly with the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists.
Arnett showed widely across the Midlands, including Dudley Art Gallery, where multiple works are documented by original exhibition labels. These include The Harvester (No. 83), Birds of a Feather (No. 86), and Dragon Form, all labelled with her West Bromwich address and professional qualifications. Her later career included both figurative and abstract work, produced while based in Wolverhampton and Tipton, and she remained active into her nineties.
Her husband, Harold Harris (1912–1982), was also Slade‑trained and exhibited regionally. The pair travelled and worked together throughout their careers, frequently showing jointly in Wolverhampton and Birmingham.
