Born Mullingar, County Westmeath in 1943, Patrick Grahams childhood shaped his life and art. His father emigrated in search of work, his mother spent long periods in hospital suffering from TB, and, aged six, Graham was sent to a small rural community. There he experienced the solitude, the wildness of nature in which he could escape into away from the trauma of his home life.
A brilliant draughtsman and teenage prodigy, Patrick Graham won a scholarship to NCAD and was recognised as such by
his tutors and fellow-students. But he himself felt that he collapsed under the dogmatic demands of academic tyranny. After college, he worked in advertising for a while, abandoned painting for years and in an Interview with John Daly of Hillsboro Fine Art said, 'I left behind that part of my life that stretched from 1962 to 1983 and began again from nil.' In a 1978 solo exhibition Graham presented his NCAD Diploma from 1964 with Cancelled stamped across it accompanied by a self-portrait with gouged-out eyes.
Today, Patrick Graham, is revered by Irish artists, is internationally acclaimed and has been the subject of numerous exhibitions [Los Angeles, Amsterdam, London] and symposia here and abroad. Elected to Aosdána in 1986, Graham was awarded the Presidents Gold Medal, Oireachtas Exhibition 1987
For years, Graham had a house and studio in Lacken, on the North Mayo coastline. Very interested in that landscapes archaeological and historical past, especially sheela-na-gigs and famine graves, speaking of the broader landscape he told John Daly that he loved to look into nothingness there.
Niall McGonagle, 2019
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