Patrick Meagher
“For a meditator, the mind as a garden is an apt metaphor. Actually extrapolating the landscape of one’s mind and attempting to illustrate it in all its dimensions over a certain number of acres, now that is a lofty goal hanging somewhere in the balance between Virtual Reality and what I might call Reality - Virtual.”
— Sandra Botnen, curator
“The internet can help us understand the relationship between consciousness and sentient beings.”
I met Patrick in New York city. Coincidentally, we live on the same street in Noho, so our talk took place in his apartment where I was able to look at a series of watercolors hanging from the brick walls in his loft. “I paint one of these everyday” he said. The palate of soft pastel colors is carried over from a proposal he did for a mural on the wall of the famous Parisian macaron bakery, Laduree, for their Soho location in New York, but with New York boarding up its walls and windows, and while future closures remain a possibility, the mural remains uncertain at best.
Quite frankly, I didn’t understand the watercolors at first. Pleasing enough to look at, but I might describe them as thin on pigment and detail. But Patrick explains there is a language to the work, a set of symbols in a varied compositions, as if these symbols appeared on a watery surface of an otherwise still mind. “When I paint these, I am making space in the “picture plane” with cloud volumes, floods of rays of light between painterly gestures and pools of color on a soft surface.” Apart from these few words, Patricks descriptions sparse, as if to leave a quiet space where I can realize for myself that what I am looking at is the meditator’s mind expressed as a garden. The paintings are more like 2D prototypes for potential space, an actual gardens filled with symbols that have flowered in his mind and matured over the past thirty years.
These conjured symbols make are what make up a well defined iconography and the building blocks of his garden. He lists them as follows; Lateral blue S curves = the winds of change; Green W’s like three blades of grass = growth, black sawhorse or stylized equestrian fence = obstacle; red knotted pretzel = Love, diagonal yellow lines = energy.
It is an exciting time for the artist who took what he calls a “detour” to attend Harvard’s School of Design. The program catered to his interest in public art, emphasizing the potential for greater social impact. Today his studies and research are paying off, as he turns his attention to Lexington, New York. The small hamlet with a history of art studios and live theatre will inevitably feel the effects of becoming the home of Meagher’s LineLand– a garden meditation.
For a meditator, the mind as a garden is an apt metaphor, but for the artists, actually extrapolating the landscape of his mind and attempting to illustrate it in all its dimensions over a certain number of acres, now that is a lofty goal hanging somewhere in the balance between Virtual Reality and what I might call Reality - Virtual. What Patrick is proposing is merging of worlds, not only the physical and spiritual, but the technological and the spiritual. Merging worlds is Patrick’s thing, “The internet can help us understand the relationship between consciousness and sentient beings.” he says.
No sooner than I make this connection with technology, I learn about another of Patrick’s projects. He is cofounder of Walters’ Cube, the Virtual Reality app allowing art galleries and artists to display their art online in a 3D space. Walter’s Cube pre-existed Covid-19 and thus with perfect timing, was ready to receive the mass movement toward selling art online, and fulfilling the need for art buyers to have an improved viewing experience on-line. I think I will have to check out Walter’s Cube, I mean, download it right now!
Back to the art at hand; namely this family of garden sculptures depicting different types of “moments” within the fluctuation of the mind. “I like to see my work in people’s homes, but the idea is not to tap the decorative art market as much as it is to engage a larger economy.” Meagher would rather his art be affordable and reach more people. His garden sculptures are designed to come in three sizes, Large - “garden size”, Medium - “home size”, and Small - “desktop size” allowing people to create a mental garden space around one’s computer. “What I am selling as art is really a meditative device and an experiment in consciousness”, say s Patrick.
(**Obstacle II, $6000 USD Edition of 3 - 2AP powder coated steel - 2 available.)
As I write this, I am no longer in New York. I am quarantined in my mother’s basement due to Covid-19 and what the border patrol called “non-compliant travel”. I am surrounded, floor to ceiling, by shelves storing my mother’s yarn, and knitting books. From this space I better understand what Patrick is accomplishing through his art. This basement suite is my mother’s happy meditative place, which she approaches with gratitude. I on the other-hand find it more like a prison. I am not engaging with the yarn as a meditative tool the way my mother does. Six days into a strike quarantine it is clear is I need to take up knitting like my sanity depends on it, otherwise spend the remainder of my 14 days meditating on the current arrangement of my own mental garden. I am beginning to like the idea that once this quarantine is over I fill my home, inside and out, with souvenirs of a quiet mind and these symbols of the various states of mind experiencing it own constant natural growth.
(**Obstacle II, $6000 USD Edition of 3 - 2AP powder coated steel - 2 available.)
Available Works
Obstacle II,
$2500 USD
Edition of 3 - 2AP
powder coated steel - 2 available.
Obstacle II,
$6000 USD
Edition of 3 - 2AP
powder coated steel - 2 available.