A Painter

Visited Pat in his studio in Bray with a friend. Always refreshing to to see what he's working on. A painter and teacher, he is one of the hardest working people I know. His studio bears witness to this. It's not nearly as cluttered as it used to be when parked in the sitting room of his small terraced house, a Baconesque mound you really wouldn't want to enter sans overalls. But it is probably fairly typical of most working, non-conceptual artists, easel encrusted with paint, floor dabbled with it and the worktable an industrial heartland of plate-palettes, brushes, tins, tubes and various bright or murky reservoirs. His work ranges, restlessly and energetically, from figurative (landscapes/portraits/life drawings, etc.) to a kind abstract expressionism (very much his own kind). He uses anything to hand: photographs, reproductions of old masters' work, stuff printed from the net or torn from magazines/newspapers... 

When he speaks his voice and gestures are often similarly restless and expressive, as is his relentlessly absurdist sense of humour.