Patrick Pye is a member of the Irish Royal Academy of Art who has won numerous awards for his handling of biblical themes through contemporary expressionism. He was born of English/Irish parents at Winchester in 1929, the year of the Wall Street crash. His mother, a music teacher, returned to Dublin in 1932; since then Dublin has been his home. He began painting at school under the sculptor Oisin Kelly. He attended the National College of Art in Dublin, and in 1957 won the Mainnie Jellet Scholarship for painting in Ireland. Under this sponsorship he traveled extensively in Europe. It was the prevailing influence of Romanesque Catalan art, seen at the National Museum in Barcelona, that finally turned his attention to Christian iconography. Pye studied stained glass in Maastricht under Albert Troost and has done many windows for churches in Ireland and England. In 1973 he took up etching at the Graphic Studio Dublin where he has continued to work at this medium ever since. He has done important commissions for schools, churches and banks. He was elected to Aosdana in 1981 and to the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1991. His publications include Apples & Angels (Veritas, Dublin 1980) and The Time Gatherer (Four Courts Press, Dublin 1991), a study of the sacred theme in the work of El Greco.

The Marian Library has an extensive collection of Pye's lithographs. Exhibit is open 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and on Saturday and Sunday by appointment.

Open parking is available in single-letter lots after 7:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday, after 4:30 p.m. Friday and all day on the weekend. A parking permit is required at all other times and can be obtained at the main visitor center on the University circle or parking booth at Lot C on Evanston Avenue.

Location: The Marian Library gallery, seventh floor of Roesch Library on the University of Dayton campus
Cost: Free
Contact: 937-229-4214

The Baptism of Christ
Signature Piece
by Patrick Pye