Patrick Mahoney - Worlds Seen and Unseen
January 15, 2026Patrick Mahoney has lived a rich life, indeed. Born in 1948 in Kansas City, he served in the Army and earned a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1975. Mahoney moved to New York City in 1975 where he made large abstract paintings and studied at the major museums such as The Met and the Museum of Modern Art. He moved to Japan for two years studying traditional Japanese painting with an old master. It was in Japan that he came by his moniker of “Potlick”. The Japanese language has no ‘R’ sound, so his friends called him Potlick. He now lives and works in Columbia, South Carolina. Mahoney draws, paints and takes photographs. He has been a practicing artist for more than 47 years and has “no intention of slowing down”. Mahoney has had several exhibitions in Tokyo and New York. He is represented in collections in the United States, England, France and Japan.
Mahoney’s small-scale graphite “Tower Series” is currently on view at 701 Contemporary Center of Art as part of the 2025 SC Biennial, which showcases the best artists working in the state today. The SC Biennial artist synopsis noted, “Mahoney’s recent Tower series (2023–25)—draws on a lifelong fascination with Bruegel’s Tower of Babel, not for its biblical narrative but for the ancient Near Eastern ziggurats (massive rectangular buildings) that have inspired him for decades. Across nearly 30 graphiteTower pieces, Mahoney explores form, imagination, and the unexpected turns of creative intuition.
His plan to render each tower identically, set in desert landscapes, transformed the moment he allowed one massive stone tower to float. That single intuitive choice opened the door to a world of surreal possibilities—setting the series on a path of continual metamorphosis. After more than 50 years of painting, Mahoney follows one guiding principle: let the work lead the way.”
Mahoney is also a published novelist. His first novel, “Phylum” in 2018, involving the Russian mafia, the Vatican, adventure and antiquity. He is working on a sequel entitled “Uruk”.
Eric Lachance observes, “Mahoney's renderings of local establishments and vernacular architecture will be recognizable to locals and convey familiarity to all while his Tower series captures intimate, Bruegel inspired graphite illustrations of monumental subjects in detailed landscapes which evoke the distant past and far future."
