In his work Patrick Hall attempts to explore the great mysteries of human existence, the tension between the spiritual and material aspects of life, the vanity and futility of man’s aspirations and the desire for peace. His name is often linked with the Neo-Expressionist trend in Irish painting in the 1980s but Hall has always disassociated himself from the political concerns of that movement. His work ‘is haunted by the unknowable, the indescribable and the wrong turn. This anxiety helps to account for a certain awkwardness in his work; it stutters in a way that reflects a lack of coherence, a dislocation between different aspects of his being’.*

*John Hutchinson. Walking on Water, in Patrick Hall; Clouds, Published by the Butler Gallery, Kilkenny; The Green on Red Gallery and the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin 2002.