Sandra C. Haynes Podcast #6 Patrick Graham Altar, from the Beginning (1991) Artist-in-Residence Fine Art Collection Shatford Library and Boone Sculpture Garden Pasadena City College February 2007 On the north wall of the circulation area in the Shatford Library, opposite the work of Jessica Bronson and very different in medium and tone, is the work of Irish painter Patrick Graham, Artist-in-Residence in 1991. Be prepared to move up close to examine its layered, multi-media surface but also be prepared to defensively pull back and support yourself against the railing or wall at some distance from it. It's a powerful work called Altar, from the Beginning (1991). The annual Artist-in-Residency has meant, as you have learned, that the Shatford Library and Boone Sculpture Garden at Pasadena City College have become repositories and friendly exhibition spaces for fine works of art donated by our visiting artists. Our students literally live with the art. Many of the works of art donated to the college were completed before the artist came to our campus; other artists, bravely and remarkably, produce a finished work within the span of the one-week residency, using our classrooms and studio spaces to transform raw materials into art. That was the case with Patrick Graham who actually collaborated with our students to create Altar, from the Beginning. Patrick Graham was born in Mullingar, County Westmeath, Ireland in 1943. At 16, his facility-- actually, genius at drawing, led him to be awarded a scholarship to the National College of Art in Dublin. After a number of years of recognition, Graham began to feel that his talent was a curse--"my clever draughtsmanship" is how he referred to his extraordinary ability to draw (Hutchinson, p.23). After a period of despair, Graham began to paint in what would become a passionate, approach to creation, based in part, as he has stated, on the powerful influence of the early twentieth century German painter and printmaker, Emil Nolde. Like some of Nolde's most famous works, Graham's mixed media paintings are involved with strongly felt emotions and brooding religious imagery conceived in an abstract, expressionistic style. Unlike Nolde, whose paintings are often vibrantly colorful, Graham employs a more subdued palette of black, gray, brown, and ochre, sometimes with noticeable traces of red. Furthermore, Graham's work is steeped in what has been called "Irishness," defined as "darkly brooding, tortured and torn...riven by guilt, sorrow and anger." (Grey Art Gallery: New York University http://www.nyu.edu/greyart/exhibits/irish/irish2/text5/text5.html ) Altar, from the Beginning. a dark, vertical piece dominated by a palette consisting of black, red, dirty white and flesh tones, is a complex work iconographically. Like many of Patrick Graham's compositions that are structured around a diptych or triptych shape, the piece consists of an upper square portion set above what looks like a two-dimensional altar table. The upper portion is constructed of thickly applied horizontal strokes, broken near the center with pencil drawings of what appear to be totemic mountains with tiny burial sites cut into their surfaces. The title of the work is written sideways in pencil here. Above this square panorama, is positioned an agitated, painterly gray sky with yet another hill, rising into it, looking like a mound tomb at Newgrange or Knowth in the Boyne Valley of Ireland. The hill is desolate-- covered with spiky strands thrusting up like stone megaliths. A line of small triangles across the top of the work and at the center may function as Christian symbols although this type of linear patterning is pervasive on prehistoric Irish megaliths. The lower third of the work is the table of the altar, made from pieces of torn paper towel, whose edges repeat the triangle or zigzag shapes. At the left, a short cup, with large foot, looking like a liturgical chalice has been carefully drawn and painted in perspective with purplish-brown shadow enveloping the right side. A few brushstrokes come forth from the chalice indicating that it is overflowing. Within the chalice is what appears to be the core of a human body, reduced to a melting blob, cut from paper and then overworked with globs of paint, dripping or smeared like blood. Revealed through pieces of torn paper, a second, smaller chalice at the right, contains a dried, pressed-flower sitting upright in its bowl. In this work, a personal narrative reflecting loss and despair, the artist causes us to feel his pain. Patrick Graham's approach to his art has been described as an experience of working with despair. In an interview in 1987, Graham said, "Yes, it's [despair] is the ultimate step. It comes when you realize that the 'truth' of the world is an illusion. It comes when there's a sense of continuous loss and through this loss arises a kind of resurrection, which is the only word I can use to describe the state I mean." (Hutchinson, John, p. 6). References: Frank, Peter. Patrick Graham: studies for the blackbird suite exhibition catalogue. (Dublin: Galway International Arts Festival LTD, 1994). Grey Art Gallery. When Time Began to Rant and Rage: Figurative Painting from Twentieth-Century Ireland, (New York: New York University, 1999). http://www.nyu.edu/greyart/exhibits/irish/ 10 January 2007 Higgins, Judith. "Art from the edge: part I -Report from Ireland," Art in America, (December, 1995). http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1248/is_n12_v83/ai_17860696 9 January 2007 Hutchinson, John. "An Interview with Patrick Graham" in Patrick Graham (Jack Rutberg Fine Arts, Inc. exhibition catalogue, 1989). Jack Rutberg Fine Arts Inc. Los Angeles http://www.jackrutbergfinearts.com/JRutbergFile/JRutbergArtists/PGraham.html Haynes(c)2007 1