Patrick O'Hara (artist)

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 wildflower and insects in 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. He was educated at Haileybury and Imperial Service College, and studied botany, zoology and geology at University of Reading.

Early career
Before becoming successful as an artist, O'Hara worked as an agricultural advisor for Spillers and Unilever. After taking evening classes in ceramics at Malvern School of Art, he began selling Earthenware models of traction engines, fairground organs and veteran cars at London department stores such as Harrods and Liberty's, with prices between £25 and £40. O'Hara was then commisioned by Lord Stokes to model British Leyland veteran cars for display in their offices in Basingstoke. After these initial successes, O'Hara, being a trained botanist, started creating porcelain models of wild flowers and butterflies.

At school, he was thrown out of pottery class.

Exhibitions
Just two years after O'Hara started creating ceramic art, he had his first exhibition in Cartier in New York in December 1972, with prices ranging between $3,000 and $16,000. 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. They included models of gorse, lady orchid, brown toadstool, and Queen of Spain fritillary butterfly. His exhibition was well-received and compared to the famous Glass Flowers of the Ware Collection.

O'Hara's first exhibition in London took place in the Moorland Gallery in October 1973, and within one hour of the opening, six sculptures had been sold for more than £6,000. 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 or rosewood bases. Five percent of the sale of a sculpture of sea holly and Glanville fritillary were donated to the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust. His work was described at the time as "probably the most delicate porcelain in the West", and O'Hara was called one of the world's great wildlife artists. Arthur Negus praised his work calling it "superb" and "antiques of the future".

In 1975, O'Hara undertook a trip down the Mississippi to study the wildflowers growing there, and to make many notes and drawings, including creating colour charts. These, he brought back to his studio in England to create porcelain sculptures depicting the flowers he had studied. His route followed that of renowned American bird artist Audubon. Many of the flowers he studied are rare or endangered species, including Mead's milkweed, as O'Hara was hoping to draw attention to the need for conservation. 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, and at an exhibition at Barclays bank in Chicago.

After moving to Cork Harbour, Ireland, 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 artwork other than paintings or drawings. In April 1980, he exhibited at the Bank of Ireland in Dublin, followed by an exhibition in Zürich in October that same year, featuring porcelain sculptures of rare and protected Alpine flowers. The proceeds of one of the sculptures at his Swiss exhibition, featuring a marsh orchid, were donated to the World Wide Fund for Nature

in 1984, O'Hara was the first living artist to exhibit at the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin. This was followed by an exhibtiion at the United Nations in Geneva to draw attention to the global need for plant conservation.

At an exhibition in Pennsylvania in 1988, O'Hara's botanical sculptures were priced up to $26,000. , and described as "so lifelike you can almost smell their fragrance"

Expo '90 in Osaka, Japan, included several O'Hara sculptures of medicinal plants.

In 1994, an exhibition at Wakehurst Place followed, organised by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

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.

In 2008, O'Hara had two exhibitions in Carlifornia, 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.

Notable commissions and collections
One of O'Hara's first commisions was by Lord Stokes to model British Leyland veteran cars in Earthenware for display in their offices in Basingstoke in 1973,. including models of the first Morris, Austin and Jaguar cars

In 1977, O'Hara was commissioned to create a series of porcelain sculptures for Hutschenreuther, a porcelain factory in Bavaria, who turned them into limited editions, using almost one hundred moulds for one sculpture.

In 1979, O'Hara was commissioned to make a sculpture of the rare Badgeworth buttercup, which was then presented to the Museum of Gloucester.

In 1982, O'Hara was commissioned by then Taoiseach Charles Haughey to make decorated Celtic vases to present to the President of India and to the Grand Duke of Luxembourg on their state visits.

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

In 1989, SmithKline Beecham and Sumitomo Chemical jointly commissioned O'Hara to sculpt a series of medicinal plants, including the flower of ginger, for display at Expo '90.

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.

In 1990, at a meeting of the Council of the European Union hosted in Dublin Castle, each European Head of state was presented with a sculpted endangered flower encased within a cage with Celtic decorations, which O'Hara calls his 'Secret Gardens'. 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.

In 1993, Jefferson Smurfit Corp. commissioned a sculpture of the rare Bartram's Ixia, which grows in their Florida forests and only flowers briefly at dawn. With O'Hara's help, the company set up a conservation programme for the plant. The sculpture is now on display at the K Club in County Kildare, Ireland.

In 2008, O'Hara was commissioned to paint a series of watercolours of the wildflowers of California by Santa Barbara Botanic Garden. 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.

One of O'Hara's sculptures is in the National Museum of Ireland – Decorative Arts and History, while one of this Pâte-sur-pâte plaques is in the collection of the Ulster Museum.

By the time O'Hara retired from artwork, he had made nearly six hundred sculptures portraying over two thousand different species of plants and butterflies.

Public appearances
In November 1973, O'Hara appeared on the Roundabout newsreel issue 138, produced by British Movietone News.

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.

David Seymour on BBC's The Arts Programme in 1975 described O'Hara as the "world's leading sculptor of wild flowers".

Recognition
O'Hara was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London in 1992.

Carl C. Dauterman, curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, described O'Hara's work as "probably the most delicate porcelain ever produced in the West".

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. To model the plants and insects in clay, he uses dental instruments, scalpels and tweezers. Some parts of his sculptures are less than 1 mm thin. The clay he uses is a translucent hard-paste porcelain, which he gets from Stoke-on-Trent.

Because the porcelain clay softens during the second firing process, every single part of the sculpture down to the thin insect antenna has to be propped up with pre-fired clay rods and ceramic wool. Furthermore, a 12.5 % shrinkage during firing has to be taken into account.

After this stage, the supports are removed, and the sculpture is painted with glazes. He has a colour palette of around 800 different colour glazes, including matte and glossy shades. The sculpture is then fired another five to six times in the kiln, at different temperatures for the different glazes.

Personal life
Patrick O'Hara was married to Anna, an art teacher and landscape painter. They had two children, Rachel and Simon. Anna died in 2013.

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.