About Me

Patricia Monique-Thérèse Maguire – A Latter Life in Painting and Poetry

My name is Patricia Monique-Thérèse Maguire O’Beirne.

The picture I chose to create for my website is my maternal grandfather Jack Haslam. A man who loved to paint in oils when he retired. A soft-spoken, kindly gifted grandfather. I never knew my paternal grandfather but he gave me my Dad Terence and that was a gift enough. The greatest love of all was and is my maternal grandmother Kitty. She is with me forever. My paternal grandmother Bridget invested in tiger lilies in her backyard. She was a tigress, an unsung heroine. My mother was my mother.

Art is a given. It is all around us. The pictorial, the narrative. It can be as simple as a vermillion highlight or as focused as an expression. The gift lies in transforming that blank canvas where someone, somewhere recognises a vibration, the intuit.

Painting animals is an honour and a pleasure. From fox, to Billy-goat, not gruff. Painting seas as still as glass or breaking in indigo, sap, viridian, and pristine titanium spray. Creating a narrative in expression. Exploring the vagaries of a pine cone. Capturing a buffeted washing line.

Art is so consuming that the small tyrannies that drag us down are dissipated for as long as that art focus is muscled. Art in all its forms does not work in a vacuum. It is a divine collaboration. That divinity needs to be acknowledged.

St. Francis of Assisi, my go-to spiritual scout, explained the creative process this way:

“the woman who works with her hands only is a laborer; the woman who works with her hands and her head is a craftswoman; the woman who works with her hands, her head, and her heart is an artist.”

Through my journey with oils and watercolors, I have had a plethora of marvelous teachers, each unique but above all genious with their own findings on their journey. This too is a collaboration. My gift has passed through me to my children and grandchildren. Still, art can also sap your energies. That expression eludes you. The endeavour becomes muddled. Just erase without fear and start again. Revisit with fresh eyes and a prayer for a cleaner endeavour. Just turn up and paint.