Patrick Hickey, painter, printmaker, architect and teacher, died on October 16th to the great grief of all his family, colleagues and friends.
He was born in Pakistan in 1927, went to school in England, and then came to Dublin as an architectural student. He qualified at UCD in 1954 and went to work for Michael Scott in 1956. In 1957 he won an Italian government scholarship to study etching and lithography at the Scuola del Libro, Urbino, and the year spent there not only changed his own life but opened up a whole new discipline for Irish artists, for when he came back he founded, with Liam Miller, Anne Yeats, Leslie MacWeeney, and Elizabeth Rivers, the Graphic Studio, where he taught the skills that he had learned in Urbino.
To this day, the Graphic Studio Dublin, now under the direction of James O'Nolan and James McCreary in large, well-equipped premises at Green Street, carries on Pat Hickey's pioneering work of introducing artists to the rich veins of possibility, and instructing them in the techniques of etching and lithography and other graphic media. The Graphic Studio also has its own gallery in Cope Street and in fact was one of the pioneer art venues in Temple Bar.
Pat's own graphic work has been increasingly popular since then. In 1965, the Italian government held a competition to illustrate Dante's Divine Comedy to mark his 700th anniversary, and Pat Hickey's magnificent Inferno etchings won second prize. To some extent, his paintings became a little overshadowed by his etchings, but his landscape paintings of the Wicklow countryside, particularly of the forestry plantations on the hills, became as distinctive as, say, Sean McSweeney's Sligo bog paintings are now.
His vision of the land seemed to be drawn to certain specific structures, and he spoke of what inspired him in an interview with Marianne Hartigan in the Irish Arts Review in 1985, reprinted in the Gandon booklet Patrick Hickey (1991). Just to take one sentence from these deeply felt statements: "You can achieve with a painting what you fail to do with your life - achieve stillness, beauty, truth, and, in some measure, immortality."
Yet he achieved so much with his life: marrying, founding a loving family, becoming a successful and well-loved artist; teaching in the School of Architecture at UCD for many years and then becoming Head of Painting in the Fine Art Faculty at the National College of Art and Design from 1986 to 1990; acting on the Cultural Relations Committee and the Board of Kilkenny Design Workshops; being a member of Aosdana, as well as an authority on Irish delftware - he organised the beautiful exhibition of 18-century Irish delftware in Castletown House for Rosc '71.
For the past 18 years, he gave an outstanding example of dogged, practical courage in coping with severe Parkinson's disease, in the last years marshalling his failing strength and energy for the four good hours of the day to devote to his work, so that his last exhibition at the Taylor Galleries in May 1997 was his best for years.
What is also not known at all about him is the work he did for the Samaritans, manning their telephone help-line to listen patiently and sympathetically to troubled callers. This he did for several years.
He had very definite ideas and convictions about art and architecture, and indeed about pretty much everything else. He could be quite forthright about pointing out the error of one's ways, or views, but he was totally convinced about the value of art, both as spiritual value and as sheer pleasure. It would be nice to think that Dante welcomed him to Paradise.
D.W.