Patrick Pye RHA (1929 – 8 February 2018) was a sculptor, painter and stained glass artist, resident in County Dublin.[1]

Pye was born in Winchester, England. He died in Dublin, Ireland.

Career edit

Major commissions can be seen across Ireland. In 1999 a retrospective of his work was exhibited by the Royal Hibernian Academy. He is a founding member of Aosdána.[2]

He has been described as "the most important creative artist in the sphere of religious thought in Ireland in our time".[3]

The poet Michael Longley described the way Pye was treated in the last year of his life as "crass, unforgivably crass".[4]

References edit

  1. ^ "Patrick Pye, stained-glass artist and 'one of the great individualists', has died". The Irish Times. Retrieved 24 December 2018.
  2. ^ "Patrick Pye". www.aosdana.artscouncil.ie. Retrieved 18 August 2020.
  3. ^ O'Doherty, E. F. (Summer–Autumn 1981). "Apples and Angels by Patrick Pye". Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review. 70 (278/279). Irish Province of the Society of Jesus: 244–246. JSTOR 30090360.
  4. ^ Boland, Rosita (17 June 2017). "Michael Longley: 'Being 77 and three-quarters is the best time of my life'". The Irish Times. Retrieved 17 June 2017. Longley is a member of Aosdána, and I ask him about his views on the recent controversy about the expectation of artists to be consistently seen to be 'productive, in order to retain their monetary cnuas. 'The treatment of Patrick Pye seems to me crass, unforgivably crass', he says. 'This is what happens when you have bureaucrats running things that have never tried to produce anything. I don't understand the language these people use; their bureaucratic shit. I don't take the cnuas and I don't get involved in the politics. But I think the thing about Aosdána, is that it saved some people's lives'.

External links edit

  • Patrick Pye's website
  • Biographical note at Aosdána
  • McAvera B. "Patrick Pye, Life and Work" Four Courts Press, Dublin, 2013.
  • Fitzsimons R.B. "Arthur O'Leary and Arthur Sullivan, Musical Journeys from Kerry to the heart of Victorian England". Doghouse, Tralee, 2008