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Patrick Pye has spent his artistic life expressing the need and relevance of the spiritual for contemporary life. He holds that the prevailing failure of modernity is not the depth of its sinfulness but its lack of passion. He describes religion as “the passion of all passions”.

Pye’s faith provides an underlying context for all of his work … not the theoretical task of the philosopher or the theologian but that of the Catholic artist … “Art cannot tell us what to believe, but it can tell us what it feels like to believe.” For El Greco - who was a formative influence for Pye - “painting was revelation”.

“I was very moved by the anonymity of the early Christian painters … that is probably the most authentic art … before anybody ever got worried about the personality of the artist.”

“If art becomes too technically sophisticated it loses an element of humanity. There is greater true feeling in the Primitives. I also respond to the kind of colours they used.”

‘Meditation on the Cross’ (triptych) shows the scenes with which every christian is familiar but here the nailing to the cross has great electricity pylons and a smoggy city in the background. In the central picture only Christ’s mother and “the faithful disciple” have stayed. And finally the bare cross is being guarded by a lone soldier from today’s fields of conflict.

In ‘God Pitched His Tent Amongst Men’ the inspirational and sustaining power of God is graphically brought to life. The biblical picture of God the Father shielding … the power of the Holy Spirit being transmitted … the attentiveness of the angel … the modern tent sheltering the Holy Family ­ the link between God and humanity of every class … and every age.

There is a timelessness in ‘The Annunciation’, ‘Baptism’ and ‘An Icon for Old Age’. The awe and worry of the young woman, the powerful image of John the Baptist and God the Father, the spiritual consolation of final hours and using the Father's cape to get a leg up to heaven.

The frighteningly powerful sky emphasises the momentousness of ‘The Crucifixion’. Christ and the two thieves on crosses. At the bottom of the picture the human responses range from the sorrow of the mourners to the excitement of the gamblers.

“It is very appropriate that the exhibition to mark my eightieth birthday should be in Killarney during Holy Week”. Patrick Pye says “there is more of my work in Killarney than anywhere else”. For the Church of the Resurrection he painted the fourteen Stations of the Cross where he shows Jesus making his last journey through the landscape of a provincial Irish town of the 1950s. The Prince of Peace Church in Fossa has four of his murals of Scenes from after the Resurrection.

Patrick Pye is a member of Aosdana and the Royal Irish Academy.