Ennis artist exhibits at Christ Church

THE work of  Ennis painter Patrick Walshe will be going on show at Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin on April 26.
Patrick was born in 1952 and brought up at Bank Place in the county town. “I left in 1969 because my father retired and we moved up to Dublin, as country people did in those days.”
He is now based in Wicklow and has had something of a varied life. “I went to Glenstal and then I did business studies in Trinity. Then I became a chef and I moved to America in the early ’80s. I was there for 10 years in New York and LA and was painting there and working as a chef. I had various exhibitions over there and came back really to start a family.”
Working as a chef might seem like a strange job for a business graduate but there were very few options available to him. “It was funny because it was a job I got into doing in the summer holidays to make money. I just happened to be good at it. When I left college in 1974, there were no jobs, at all. People think it’s bad now but I came out of Trinity with an honours degree and all they said to me was ‘have you thought of emigrating?’ I didn’t get one single interview for a job. I was on the dole for a while and then someone I knew who was making TV commercials asked me would I come along and cater the commercials. Then I started a bit of a film catering business and did stuff for bands on tour coming to Ireland. Then I sold it and went off to the States.”
New York was the centre of the art world and he spent a lot of time there, something he enjoyed and recommends to young people. “When they talk about young people having to emigrate, I think it is a fantastic thing to do, to get out of the country and go and see how other people do it. I think everyone should go and live in New York for a few years. Everyone who is there wants to get ahead and wants to do well. It’s tough and abrasive and it’s real. It’s a fantastic work environment. You work your ass off over there and you really have to compete, it’s like playing a Cup rugby match or something. From an art point of view, it’s where it’s all happening.”
He has been back in Ireland since the early ’90s and says that it’s been very hard to sell paintings for the last few years. “I’m sort of an at-home parent and I paint all the time. It’s been a disaster, the last few years have been a disaster, a few years back, I was selling everything I could paint and then it just went off a cliff. Really, really bad. I didn’t do a show for a couple of years but you just have to persevere, get on with it and do something a bit special, to make it a bit different.
“This show in Christ Church, I think it’s going to be a really nice show. It becomes more abstract as you go through it. The format that I’m doing it in is that I’m putting the landscapes in the cathedral upstairs, the more realistic stuff is there because the light is really fantastic. You go downstairs into the crypt and it becomes more abstract.”
His work has a particular style. “I paint on silver leaf. I cover the canvas in silver foil and then I paint on that. You get a lot of light that comes back out of the painting and it becomes quite three-dimensional.”
He says he is glad to be supporting the restoration of the cathedral. “I became aware that they’re trying to raise a couple of million for the cathedral. They were doing a big charity auction and I donated a painting to it. Then I thought I could do something more by doing a show and giving them a percentage of the proceeds and bring some more money in. It’s a fantastic building, it really is, it’s something really special that we should be very proud of.”
The show at Christ Church continues until May 12.