THIS exhibition is not, in the usual sense, a retrospective (although Pye, at this stage of his career, well deserves one) but it does range back over half a century to a small triptych dating from 1947. Religious works overwhelmingly dominate it, including a number of triptychs of various sizes; there is even an impressive, dignified "quintyptch", i.e. a painting in five aligned panels. Several of these triptychs have folding doors in the old manner, and these doors, when closed, are painted in turn - usually with single figures.
Religious art is Pye's especial vocation, and he has been remarkably single-minded, and unfashionable, in pursuing this. A generation ago Ireland was almost monolithically Catholic, while today agnosticism, secularism, liberal capitalism etc have nibbled away at this consensus. We seem also to be feeling the currents of New Age religiosity which, although often mindless and ephemeral, has a certain valid core and plainly represents some latter-day inner aspiration or discontent, however confused.
However, Pye is relatively traditional in his Christian imagery, even if his treatment of it is often highly personal and stylised. There are no concessions here to the kind of taste which favours Pop liturgy or the Mass-with-guitars. The Crucifixion, the Assumption, Annunciation, Transfiguration etc. are in general treated mystically and hieratically, without any flavour of Hollywood or Jesus Christ Superstar.
Pye is an artist with a complex ancestry. He is plainly aware of Gothic and Romanesque art, Italian Primitives and the great fresco painters of the Cinquecento, Byzantine art and perhaps even the Orient. In more contemporary terms there is an affinity with Stanley Spencer and Graham Sutherland, while he is also one of the heirs to Jellett and Hone, and perhaps even of Harry Clarke. This suggests eclecticism, yet no Irish painter has a more individual style. Whether or not you like or respond to it, you recognise it straightaway as his and nobody elses.
Flattened figures and sharp outlines, a tendency to compose in a kind of circular form with the effect sometimes of a miniature stage set, perspectives which recede almost surrealistically, bright but slightly chalky colours are all characteristics of his strongly marked style. If there is a touch of neoprimitivism and preciosity, even of pastiche, that is a danger he runs, and the archaism of his angular, almost wooden figures is presumably the effect which he intends. Pye is a sophisticated, late 20th-century artist using for his own ends the styles and forms of the past.
Though religious themes dominate, there are also some excellent small still-life pictures, a landscape of Piperstown where Pye lives and works, some studies and graphic art. And triptychs etc apart, a number of the religious works which concentrate on a single figure have a genuine quality of devotional meditation. Pye is not everybody's painter - he is too mannered and unyielding for that - but neither is he an esoteric or anachronistic one, and his concerns are much more "modern" than many people may care to admit. Meanwhile, our public galleries and collections might think, unfashionably, of acquiring some of these works.
