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 DublinWinter 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.