Vocation and Vision
Patrick Pye talks to Brian McAvera about the intellectual demands of spirituality and his profound appreciation for the emotional power and chromatic intensity of the Italian 'primitives'

Design Portfolio

The Memory Man
Mic Moroney previews Hughie O'Donoghue's exhibition at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, which presents a rare opportunity to view the last painting in the monumental Passion series, together with paintings reflecting his more recent preoccupation with the construction of memory

Entering a new visual zone
John Cronin's new series of paintings to be seen in April at Green on Red Gallery, Dublin inspire an impulse to crawl into their pictorial orbit, writes Jane Humphries

Art and Extinction
Diarmuid Delargy tells Dermot Healy how potent boyhood memories of the sea prompted the theme of his current exhibition on show at Taylor Galleries, Dublin

The Hero with a Thousand Faces
The recent acquisition of Edward McGuire's compelling portrait of Anthony Cronin, and Francis Bindon's sensitive portrayal of Jonathan Swift, are two of the highlights of the literary salon assembled for the Crawford Art Gallery's current exhibition discussed here by Peter Murray

A matter of Form
Ann Mulrooney explores ceramicist Sonja Landweer's nuanced and experimental approach to materials in a practice spanning six decades

Family Witness
Mark Granier discusses David Stephenson's artistic engagement with two families in a series of striking photographic portraits

Patrick Collins: A Modern Celt
The landscape paintings of Patrick Collins combine a Celtic sensibility with a modernist aesthetic, argues Brian Fallon in this new assessment

Thomas Roberts: et in Arcadia Ego
Julian Walton discusses the ill-fated 18th-century landscape artist Thomas Roberts, the subject of an exhibition at the National Gallery of Ireland this spring

Offaly's Cultural legacy
The Taoiseach Mr Brian Cowen, T.D. introduces this extended coverage of arts and heritage in Co Offaly

Florentia Monasteriorum
A network of good roads, proximity to the Shannon and royal patronage were forceful contributory factors in the extraordinary flowering of monasteries in the midlands during the 6th and 7th centuries, writes Caimin O'Brien

The Gospel Book of Macregol of Birr
A gloss in Old English obscured the fact that the 8th-century manuscript The Book of Birr or The Macregol Gospels was created in Birr, County Offaly; Margaret Hogan recalls its history

Treasures of County Offaly
Offaly's boglands have yielded a number of treasures over the years, some lost accidentally while others were deposited as offerings to the gods, writes Eamonn P Kelly

Sermons in stone
In the pre-Norman period, high-quality stone craftsmanship flourished in the Midlands and Co Offaly in particular, enhanced by the supply of malleable sandstone, writes Peter Harbison

The Benjamin Iveagh Library at Farmleigh
Mirjam Foot examines a selection of highly accomplished bindings, dating from the 18th century, collected by Benjamin Guinness, 3rd Earl of Iveagh

Urban Attitude
Grafton Architects' innovative addition to the Luigi Bocconi University in Milan marks a high point in their practice, writes Stefano Casciani