Notes from North Mayo features selected works based in the rugged coastal landscape around Stonefield, Carrowteige and Kilgalligan in the parish of Kilcommon, Erris. This outpost in the north-westernmost corner of Mayo has long held a fascination for Harris’ work, and he returns frequently to his base there to paint the sea cliffs, rock stacks and attendant weather fronts that roll in from the Atlantic Ocean.

Viewable online here.

European oil painting and its landscape tradition have long been thought of as instruments of possession and knowledge. But Harris does not paint in order to assert his ownership of or dominance over a particular landscape or view; rather, in an effort to unravel its transcendental qualities. Notions of uncertainty and the ultimate futility of painters’ attempts to transform that which is immaterial into an enduring residual object – a painting – haunt this work, which self-consciously tries to make possible something that simply cannot be. As John Berger puts it in Ways of Seeing: ‘The sky has no surface and is intangible; the sky cannot be turned into a thing of a given quantity. And landscape painting begins with the problem of painting…’

Born in Dublin in 1953, Pat Harris studied at the National College of Art & Design from 1973 to 1978 and at the National Higher Institute of Fine Art Antwerp, graduating in 1981. In 2008 he was awarded a PhD in Fine Art by the University of Antwerp. He has exhibited widely across Europe, with numerous solo shows in Ireland, Belgium and London. He is a member of Aosdána and a member of the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA), where he is currently Professor of Painting. Harris’ work is represented in many private and public collections in Ireland and abroad, including The Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon, IMMA, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, UCD, St. Patrick’s Hospital, the Language Centre of Ireland, AIB, AXA and the University of Antwerp.