Padrig Morin amalgamates symbols – Celtic from his native Brittany in France; Buddhist and Hindu from a lifetime living, working and researching in Sri Lanka. In recent years, his art draws parallels between ancient cultures across continents and histories.
The Tree of Life is a universal symbol, but it occupied a central place in Celtic beliefs and
worship. It symbolises the connection between Heaven and Earth, mind and body, the
physical and spiritual, the seen and the unseen. Ancient Celts believed trees were the
ancestors of men. For Padrig, it is an act of re-appropriation, reclaiming, or re-signifying
cultural symbols, forgotten or erased by the Christian religion or by the dominant culture. The persistence of an intuitive or atavistic memory links modern Celts to the memory of their ancestors, reflecting a vision in which the tree acts as a fundamental bridge between people, nature, and the sacred.
Other symbolic elements included in Padrig’s works are birds, dogs and numbers, as they intimately blend with certain aspects of the tree of life. Birds are sacred messengers between the natural and supernatural worlds. They often represent deities, signifying wisdom, protection, and the souls of the departed. Dogs are symbols of loyalty and protection, associated with healing gods - their images found at shrines throughout the ancient Celtic world.
Padrig Morin paints civilisations’ contentions with the spirituality of symbols and the power they hold over us. His work also speaks to a loss of cultural identity, through his own experience growing up in France, where the Breton language and its Celtic roots were overshadowed by French national language and culture beginning several centuries ago.
Symbols represent ideas that keep traditions alive. In Padrig’s paintings, we see the yearning for invigorating those symbols once again, drawing on their power to connect people and spiritual practices throughout the world.
