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.
© 2026
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 Landscapes
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
Image Alan Benton © 2004
Image Ros Kavanagh © 2024
Image Johanna Connor © 2021
Aug 20 - Sep 6
FAMILY MATTERS
Cnoc Buí, Union Hall
Family Matters is an exhibition of works of sculpture and drawing by a trio of artists; a dad, a daughter and a husband, because… within this particular conceptual thread of exhibitions at Cnoc Buí, focusing on families of artists, it is the family connections which have focal relevance. Questions will undoubtedly flow through this relevance to family connections whilst aesthetic and subjective meaning will flow perhaps with another kind of relevance altogether through the artworks.
Pat Connor’s ceramic sculpture reveals a deftness of hand with the material through a practiced ability to manipulate its physical properties to his will for more than 50 years. His figurative works are expressive and replete with emotional content.
Mistaken by our assumptions and caught in the wire of nostalgia, Johanna Connor looks to find herself lost in a thicket of significant meaning, where the traces upon the landscape remain in evidence from the activity of people with their endeavours.
Michael Quane draws upon the surface of the limestone with a tungsten-carbide-tipped chisel until eventually the loose flabby boulder is drawn ever tighter into a deliberate form. His subjects enquire subtly of attachment and belonging.
Sep 18 - Oct 4
BLUE HOUSE GALLERY Autumn Group Show
Nov 26 - Dec 23
SOLOMON FINE ART GALLERY Winter Group Show
2025 Highlight
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.