In Search of Patrick

This week has been interesting, and I kept coming along to the same question
day after day--
Would I ever be able to discover the true identity
of a curious artist I recently encountered in some 70's magazines?

Mais OUI!

Oui Magazine August, 1975

Currently I am documenting Oui Magazine content
and have been so caught up in discovering the parallels
of that time to this one,
it's as though America is stuck in a time warp...
government has resolved nothing, Mexico is still having drug wars,
women are still posing nude...oh, blast it, never mind all that!
...no, I don't normally actually say blast it in general conversation,
but now I may have to.

My intent in posting today has nothing to do with politics,
or blasting,
but everything to do with art.
I am amazed at the quality of work often found in these magazines.
To my delight, I discover new talent within every monthly installment.
My online searches are building up
as I pore over all information I can find.
This, in process, stalls my listing times considerably,
due to the inherent curiosity I cannot rid myself of.

I read, and fill my eyes and multiple brain-tummies
(tumors, they must be tumors the way they eat!),
filling them with imagery, getting closer to the truth,
or running into dead-ends,
or finding other equally interesting artists to swoon over.

Every day in discovery is Thanksgiving.
Without conclusions, without closure, I am often left feeling
as though I am too stuffed with inconclusive data
to be allowed to have my just desserts.
Today is my day for sweet potato pie.

Recent attempts to catalogue brought me once again to the hunt.

One artist, especially, caught my eye,
and the scrawled signature left at least a cryptic clue.


Searches for Patrick yielded little,
and I continued from OUI 1975 on into OUI 1977
wending my way through stories, and illustrations
some easily found
or readily known
yet still no clue to patrick.
And here in 1977,  I find another clue.
An unsigned work in the October issue with a credit to Patrick Byrne.
Aha! I surmise......

scanned from 10/77 oui (click to enlarge)

this woeful face of a Tampa Bay Buccaneer
can only be the work of the same Patrick....

and do I ever remember that era of NFL football

The Bucs, Saints, Chiefs and Jets were pitiful, 

the Cowboys did not play on Thanksgiving this year, 

but won SuperBowl XII!  

....but back to
Patrick Byrne.

Imagine my joy at finding this image on John Patrick Byrne's site

stolen from johnbyrneart.com (click to enlarge)

Plus, finding this delightful conversation
from 2008 with Mr. Byrne by Jennie Renton.

I gotta say, this gentleman is one talented motherfucker!
Sure, I cringe to think that's the best way I can put it....
I can do better than that....
Patrick is the Bomb!
A true artist in every sense of the word....
artist, author, playwright,
That I had never heard of him is a testament to just how uncultured I truly am.

 In any event, the search for provenance,
the hunt for value, the love for the content,
keeps me in prolonged discovery mode.

 I really like that.

Paul Krassner scanned from 8/75 Oui (click to enlarge)

Is it just me, or does this image seem rather personal?
I was immediately caught up in every facial nuance,
each word and object curiously exhibited...
This is interesting art
of and by a couple of
devilishly clever men.