‘By adopting rational and sentimental approaches, we seek to subdue nature and keep it in ‘its place’.  To live in this world sustainably, however, we need to transcend our fears and confront its darker aspects - the unpredictable, the catastrophic, the encounter with darker gods, with Pan and Hecate, and the chthonic underworld figures.’ ((James Hillman)

Our lives are governed by invisible forms - in the words of Carl Jung  ‘spirits, ghosts, ancestral and parental influences, inner voices, untold stories, dreams, synchronicities and mysteries’.  For several years, Patsy Connolly has been working on a series of paintings and drawings, exploring these notions, and attempting to portray the diverse faces of nature by exploring a personal journey.

The paintings are based on childhood memories of the home place and the significant people, creatures and objects. The family home was a rambling rookery on three levels - the basement, a fearful but exciting labarynthine mass or dark dank passages,  Outside, the Burren echoed these levels,  Castles, faery-forts, dolmens,ever-beckoning caves, cosy goat smelling hollows and clawing grykes fed childhood rich imaginations.  All were imbued with symbolic depths that haunted fragile presences.

The paintings reflect the multiple narratives of our lives, and suggest the transformative possibilities of the creative integration of the various stories. The works hold and compel one, force one down the dark steps of the psyche, and yet each offers a unexpected shift, a glimpse, an opening, which leads one on to the transforming possibility of integration and light.  most of all, these works offer a deep spiritual insight into human nature, our own souls, our own depths, our own Place.