Patrick O'Hara

Patrick O'Hara (born 1936) is an English artist and sculptor. His main subjects are wildflowers and butterflies, focusing in particular on endangered species. He is known for his highly delicate work in porcelain, portraying wildflowers and insects life-size, with incredible attention to detail and accuracy.

Early life and education Patrick O'Hara was born in Windsor, England., in 1936, having ancestral roots in County Mayo, Ireland. His father was a Latin and geography teacher, and his great uncle Alfred Scorer was an eminent entomologist, and O'Hara showed a keen interest in natural history from an early age. at London department stores such as Harrods and Liberty's, with prices between £25 and £40. O'Hara was then commissioned by Lord Stokes to model British Leyland veteran cars for display in their offices in Basingstoke. The exhibition took place in a darkened room, with his sculptures lit up by hidden lighting, showcasing the translucent nature of porcelain. His exhibits of wild flowers and insects in porcelain were described as exceptionally fine, accurate and scientifically flawless, with even the insects' antennae hand-modelled in porcelain.

O'Hara's first exhibition in London took place in the Moorland Gallery in October 1973, The exhibition featured nineteen original sculptures in total, each one being made in pure porcelain, with no wire or plastic used, sometimes only one thirtieth of an inch thick. One stand for a 20th sculpture remained empty, as the wild gladioli that O'Hara had intended to model, had all been picked. He left the stand empty as an appeal to the public not to pick rare flowers. The largest sculpture at the exhibition featured a peony that grows wild only on Steep Holm island, and many of the exhibits are mounted on polished onyx His route followed that of renowned American bird artist Audubon. The sculptures went on show at two exhibitions in America in 1975, at the Chicago Flower and Garden Show, which at the time was the largest indoor flower show in the world, O'Hara is described as enjoying "a freedom and delicacy which give originality and aesthetic appeal to his highly individual works. [...] Patrick works exclusively in porcelain and has acquired, in a few short years, an enviable reputation for his exquisite sculptures of wild flowers [...] Patrick is the consummate artist, botanist and craftsman in porcelain." O'Hara exhibited at the Wexford Festival in 1976 with sculptures showing wild flowers and butterflies that can be found on the Irish coast. They were regarded as real collector's items but that may appeal only to a certain taste.

Further exhibitions followed, including at the Royal Horticultural Society in London in 1979., where O'Hara was the first ever artist showing botanical artwork other than paintings or drawings. In April 1980, he exhibited at Bank of Ireland in Dublin, followed by an exhibition in Zürich in October that same year, The proceeds of one of the sculptures at his Swiss exhibition, featuring a marsh orchid, were donated to the Swiss League for the Protection of Nature Pro Natura. This was followed by an exhibition at the United Nations in Geneva entitled 'Secret Gardens of the World' to draw attention to the global need for plant conservation. To underline his approach to conservation, O'Hara never picks a flower to model it, but studies them in the wild. and described as "so lifelike you can almost smell their fragrance". and one of his sculptures is housed in The Adachi Institute of Woodcut Prints in Tokyo, while another is in the Embassy of Ireland, Tokyo. At this exhibition, O'Hara not only exhibited porcelain sculptures, but also artworks in glass and watercolour, depicting flora and fauna from many different parts of the world.

In June 2002, thirty years after his first exhibition in New York, O'Hara exhibited porcelain sculptures, pâte-sur-pâte plaques and watercolour paintings at the National Botanic Gardens (Ireland). Sculptures in this exhibition were priced between €6,000 and €12,000.

2004 saw O'Hara holding an exhibition at Fota House, Co. Cork showing twenty four different porcelain sculptures, pâte-sur-pâte plaques and watercolours, depicting flora and fauna from his travels to the US, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Oman.

In 2008, O'Hara had two exhibitions in California, one at the American Museum of Ceramic Art and one at Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, featuring the first ten of a series of watercolour paintings he was commissioned to do by the botanic garden. The aim of this commission was to highlight rare endemic species and support their conservation. The next exhibition at Santa Barbara Botanic Garden followed in 2009, by which time O'Hara had painted twenty watercolours of Californian wildflowers.

By 2011, O'Hara had completed all thirty watercolour paintings for this series, which were exhibited alongside some sculptures in Boole Library Gallery of University College Cork, Ireland, and which he hoped would inspire more students to study botany. He made prints of the thirty watercolour paintings, and donated one of each to the Irish Heritage Trust, which houses them at Fota House in Cork harbour.

His last exhibition before retiring was at the Wildling Museum of Art and Nature in Solvang, California, in 2013. It showcased his entire collection of thirty watercolour paintings commissioned by Santa Barbara Botanic Garden.

He did one final exhibition in 2017, in his own home Manor House in Curraghbinny in Cork harbour, before selling the house. It featured works of art both by him and his late wife, landscape painter Anna O'Hara. He was admired for not only the artwork but also for his commercially successful business which provided O'Hara and his family with a living as well as making significant contributions to plant conservation.

Notable commissions and collections Earthenware model of 1913 Morgan 3 wheel cyclocar by Patrick O'Hara. Height 7.5 cm. Commissioned in 1970 by Peter Morgan, chairman of Morgan Car Company. One of O'Hara's first commissions was by Lord Stokes to model British Leyland veteran cars in Earthenware for display in their offices in Basingstoke in 1973,

In 1979, O'Hara was commissioned to make a sculpture of the rare Badgeworth buttercup, which was then presented to the Museum of Gloucester. The vases show paintings of mythological creatures inspired by the Book of Kells, alongside Irish wildflowers and butterflies.

Several of O'Hara's sculptures are housed in the Flagler Museum in Florida, having been commissioned by Jean Flagler Matthews.

In 1990, Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden in Richmond, Virginia commissioned a series of sculptures of rare American flowers as a permanent collection in their premises.

Other notable people in possession of O'Hara's works of art include President of France François Mitterrand, the Sultan of Oman, and Chancellor of Germany Helmut Kohl. Commissioned by then Taoiseach Charles Haughey to highlight the EU Habitats Directive, each flower was chosen appropriately for the recipient. For example, François Mitterrand received a sculpture of Primula allionii, which grows in an area of the French Alps where he liked to holiday. Margaret Thatcher received the blue Spring Gentian, Each of the Celtic vases bears the Irish and EU flags, as well as the national flag of the recipient's country. Unlike Victorian botanical paintings, his watercolours depict flowers in association with other plants and with the insects and birds that live off them, composing a particular natural habitat.

In 1974, the BBC made a documentary film about O'Hara's work as part of the 'Look, Stranger' series of programmes, which showed him making a porcelain sculpture of wildflowers over a three-week period.

Wilfrid Blunt, author of the great standard The Art of Botanical Illustration (1950) writes in 1987 that he "would sooner own a piece by O'Hara than one by Fabergé", and reckons that O'Hara has "surpassed" the work of the Ware Collection of Blaschka Glass Models of Plants.

Technique

O'Hara's work has been described as a synthesis of art and science. Each of his sculptures is a unique piece, and could take O'Hara up to three months to complete. The mineral clay he uses is a translucent hard-paste porcelain, which he gets from Stoke-on-Trent, and is based on a Japanese formula. He also matches the plant's colours to a colour palette of fired samples of glazes, as the colour glazes for porcelain look very different before and after firing.

Because the porcelain clay softens during the second firing process at 1,283°C, O'Hara was remarried in 2019, to Daniela.

Gallery of works

Publications

O'Hara, D. P. (1996, August 27–30). Botanical Sculpture: A Life Saving Alternative? [Paper presentation]. Linnean Society Annual Regional Conference: Systematics and Biological Collections, Belfast, UK.