Patrick Hall “A Living Earth”

Fergus McCaffrey (514 W 26th St.)

This event has ended.

I find it practically impossible to talk about painting except in terms of intimacy.
Patrick Hall, 1988

Fergus McCaffrey Gallery, New York, is delighted to present an exhibition of paintings and works on paper by visionary Irish artist Patrick Hall (b. 1935). Hall has lived in the wind-swept County Sligo, Ireland for the last thirty years, working with a quiet profundity. His work reflects a lifetime of learning and the wisdom that comes from experience, as well as a certain sadness that accompanies that sagacity. Although highly regarded by numerous artists, writers, and poets in Ireland, Hall’s work remains relatively unknown elsewhere. Aged eighty-eight, this solo exhibition will be his first in New York.

Four large paintings are at the heart of the of the exhibition: Wound, White Stone, and Two Stones from 2019, plus a related painting titled Nowhere ending cloud, 2014. These will be presented alongside sixteen ink and watercolors made between 2003-23. These works are accompanied by two early paintings Love Leaving the Heart of Man, 1958 and Sun 1958-59; while the painting Lover of Horses (Phil), 1981, is exhibited alongside two watercolors Angels from 2014 and Backside, 1988 in the drawings gallery. Collectively, the exhibition brings together more than sixty years of work.

While earlier works in the show such as Lover of Horses (Phil), 1981, celebrate sexual pleasure with arresting frankness, Hall’s approach to painting changed after a bereavement in the late 1980s. The devastation caused by that personal loss and the broader context of the global AIDS epidemic greatly informed his subsequent practice. The deceptive simplicity of Hall’s paintings and the delicacy with which he handles pen and ink belie the emotional intensity and impact of these works. Pleasure and pain, possession and loss, inner and outer worlds, are all simultaneously evoked along with the transience and absurdity of human life.

Born in 1935 in Co Tipperary, Patrick Hall studied at the
Chelsea School of Art and the Central School of Art and Design
in London. In 1966 he moved to Spain, returning to Ireland in
1974. Solo exhibitions include the Douglas Hyde Gallery,
Dublin, 1995; Butler Gallery, Kilkenny, 2002; Green on Red
Gallery, Dublin, 2004; the Model Arts and Niland Gallery, Sligo,
2006; the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, 2007; and
Hillsboro Fine Art, Dublin, 2022. Recently Hall worked with the
painter Nick Miller to create the exhibition Patrick Hall:

Beginnings at The Model, Sligo, 2021-22, and an interview with the two artists can be viewed at: https://www.irishtimes.com/video/video/2022/06/25/its-harder-to-make-friends-when-youre-older- how-two-artists-bonded-over-lockdowns/. Hall’s works are included in many private and public collections including the Arts Council of Ireland, the Dublin City Gallery: The Hugh Lane and the Irish Museum of Modern Art. He was appointed a member of Aosdána in 1982 the name derives from the Gaelic “aos dána” meaning, people of the arts or people of wisdom. Hall currently lives and works in Co. Sligo