PAT CONNOR

The Gallery, Ballydehob; until April 29

This is Pat Connor's first solo exhibition for eight years, and also the first since his retum from a four-year visit to New York. It's a coup for Ballydehob.

Connor is best known for the witty clay figures he was producing in the early 1980s - tall, thin, big-breasted women and giant teapots, and for many he is primarily a ceramic artist. That idea is firmly contradicted here: there are 13 clay sculptures, smaller scale, still highly expressive and with the familiar mossy texture, but good as they are, the excellence of Connor's mixed media paintings completely overshadows them.

Connor is an expert print-maker, and this is evident in the richly textured background of his latest work. These 30 paintings combine collage, charcoal, line drawing and oil and probably life-blood too. There are things going on in the first room, devils chasing their own tails, figures falling through space. that keep the viewer rivited. Connor has said the New York paintings resulted from reading Finnegans Wake in Brooklyn, a description I cannot better. The blood-flecked Through The Looking Glass not only recalls Francis Bacon in colour and texture, but also has a touch of his power. In Amenti (West), Connor shows he is familiar with the far reaches of the imagination, recalling the outré Maurice Sendak. But comparisons are inadequate for a true original who is getting the stuff from a place that few venture to explore. And I don’t mean Brooklyn. 

Alannah Hopkins