The grate outdoors

© 2025

I draw, as if through a lens, editing the visible and the invisible; striving to extract some of the hidden magic from the mundane. The potential titles jostle during the process of drawing and in discussion sometimes with Michael until they fix themselves. Finding a title is serious business. 

In my looking, I find myself lost in a thicket of significant meaning, where the traces remain from the activity of people in their endeavours, where the friction of lives leave their marks on the landscape and the landscape of things: where the furrows drawn deep remain in the tilt of the soil, where the hollow in a horizon holds a story, where the scale expressed in the husbandry of the land reveals another scale of means, where the proportions chosen express an aesthetic which is personal, communal or indeed global, where the strata reveals the architecture of social and cultural evolution, where we’re mistaken by our assumptions and caught in the wire of nostalgia, where the landscape simply has the indelible, although at times, the faintest, footprint impressed upon its surface. 

Beauty in a scene, which at first glance, appears to be strangely ordinary is what truly interests me and it’s through the process of drawing that I strive to reveal this. I seek traces that are current or historic, are seasonal or daily or are simply once in time. A trace of something magic lying within the mundane.

 

Exhibition Calendar 2026

Apr 2 - 25

SOLOMON FINE ART GALLERY‍ ‍. Spring Group Show

Apr 3 - 22

BLUE HOUSE GALLERY Spring Group Show

Apr 22 - May 13

BLUE HOUSE GALLERY Landscape

Jul 17 - Aug 5

BLUE HOUSE GALLERY Summer Group Show

Jul 23 - Aug 29

SOLOMON FINE ART GALLERY Summer Group Show

Aug 1 - 16

West Cork Creates  Listen to The Land Speak

Cnoc Buí, Union Hall

20th Aug - 6th Sep

FAMILY MATTERS 

Cnoc Buí, Union Hall

An exhibition of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture by Pat Connor, Michael Quane RHA and Johanna Connor

Sep 18 - Oct 4

BLUE HOUSE GALLERY Autumn Group Show

Nov 26 - Dec 23

SOLOMON FINE ART GALLERY Winter Group Show

I’d like to thank Tara and the Solomon team for including my work on the Solomon Salon Wall at Art Evolve contemporary art fair at the RDS this year.

SOLOMON FINE ART Stand 30 + 37 

Friday 27th. - Sunday 29th. March

CURrENTLY

Domain of the Dinosaurs

The Glucksman, UCC. 15th. Nov 2025 - 12th April 2026

Domain of the Dinosaurs

A pioneering exhibition of scientific and artistic displays that has been developed at University College Cork by Maria McNamara, Professor of Palaeontology, and Fiona Kearney, Director of the Glucksman. It features over 250 real fossil specimens from land, sea and air, bringing the world of the Irish dinosaurs to life.

Five Irish artists were commissioned to bring a creative lens to the deep time involved in palaeontological research, providing an imaginative response to Ireland's rich fossil record that pre-dates the dinosaurs by millions of years.

The Glucksman, UCC, Art Library Programme.

© 2025

HIGHLIGHTS FROM 2025

The grate outdoors

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SOLOMON FINE ART GALLERY      Dublin
Winter Group Show,                                  Nov 20th. - Dec 23rd.

Holdfast

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PAPER - PENCIL - CHISEL - STONE

A joint exhibition with Michael Quane RHA and Johanna Connor visual artist. 

An exhibition of work brought about through the act of drawing on the artists respective media of paper and stone. 

Connor, drawing as if through a lens, edits the visible and the invisible, striving to extract some of the hidden magic from the mundane. 

Quane on the other hand incessantly scrapes, with the chisel, in the act of carving, the loose flabby bolder which ever tightens, with each pass of the chisel, into deliberate form.

Lavit Gallery, Cork 22nd. May - 14th. June

Kelly’s Cafe, Wexford  17th. Oct - 1st. Nov

We wish to thank Bill and Grace Kelly for their kind invitation to exhibit at Kelly’s Cafe for the duration of The Wexford Opera Festival.