Keanu Reeves remarked, “Sure I believe in God and the Devil, but they don't have to have pitchforks and a long white beard.”

Patrick McGrant Muñíz writes, “The figure of the Devil has always intrigued me as a painter. I remember my brother and [my friend] Cesar talking much about this prince of darkness after coming back from the church sermon. After so much talk, it almost became a satirical motif to question the fear tactics used within the Christian tradition. There's always the question whether to depict him as an ugly and terrifying horned beast or a young beautiful attractive fallen angel. I've always appreciated artists’ different visions on the subject, from Hieronymus Bosch to Alexandre Cabanel.

Bosch’s Prince of Hell in his painting The Garden of Earthly Delights (1490-1510) is a ravenous bird-headed creature who is consuming a sinner who, in turn, may have consumed four and twenty black birds.

Alexander Cabanel’s Fallen Angel (1847), on the other hand, is a handsome, seductive young man shedding a tear that he is no longer favored by God among the heavenly choir floating above him.

Looking at and seeing Patrick’s paintings is always a visual and philosophical delight. We can read into or acknowledge the multitude of references in his heavily-populated paintings, but he provides written commentaries for the paintings in a series created for his exhibition, Arcanas: Neocolonial Retablos Inspired after Tarot at Taller Puertorriqueño in Philadelphia. Yet, we are still free to interpret the images from our own experiences--looking and seeing with our own eyes.

He writes, “In my version, El Nuevo Idolo, a Promethean savior figure holds a flamed torch in one hand and holds up a small mobile device in the other. Like Prometheus, Quetzalcoatl and many other world deities, Lucifer was initially considered as a 'bringer of light' and civilizing figure… The figure depicted on this piece is directly inspired after the painting Resurrection of Christ by El Greco. With this context in mind, one could even consider this to be an 'Anti-Christ' figure. Extending his dark wings and wearing a 'Christ-like' mask, this ‘new idol’ shows us a world driven by progress, conquest and wars, symbolized by the bulldozer, Spanish caravel and military tank beneath him. The natural world is set on fire in name of profit and gallivanting self- indulgence. The human fictions of old religions and modern corporations are insinuated in the dark ash clouds. This dual nature of past and present fictions is continued in the form of the two serpent tattoos on the masked 'light bringer's' thighs. Deceivingly this 'new idol' is not the idol himself but rather the presenter of the actual idol in the form of a small mobile electronic device.”

Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent god of the Aztec appears in the smoke clouds beneath the angel’s wing (old religion) on the left and modern corporate fiction appears in the form of Mickey Mouse on the right.

“A man and a woman glued to their phones can be seen at the bottom, echoing the idea of being under the spell and illusion of artificially created 'realities'. Our human addictions and distractions have created indifference, discontent and a general lack of empathy. The devil operates like the mainstream mass media apparatus, luring us with the objects of our desires and escapism while the world burns to the ground. This is a major force that is as much about inaction as it is about giving in and losing oneself to materialism and the pleasures of the flesh. It represents the enslavement to baser instincts and the negative side of the libido. As Jung's Shadow archetype, it is also speaks of the temptation of going against one's own moral principles due to confusion, chaos and an unclear sense of purpose. Big tech industries with its use of complex algorithms have played a major role in this deceitful operation. By stimulating division, they weaponize our own fears and desires, while selling our data and our souls in the process. Just like the people seeing their own shadows in Plato's allegory of the cave, we must find a way to wake up, get up and see the light outside of our algorithm-induced online bubbles.”

The ”new Idol” was inspired not only by El Greco’s Christ but by the Tarot Arcana card , “The Devil (XV)”. Patrick’s family home in Puerto Rico was destroyed in Hurricane Maria in 2017 along with his studio and his art. A year before, he had rediscovered his first Tarot deck there, bought from his friend Cesar for five dollars after Cesar felt the cards too accurately foretold a series of unfortunate events.

Patrick has a feeling that this deck “has a live energy” with its association with Cesar and its being one of the few things he has from his childhood. He doesn’t follow Tarot divination, being naturally skeptical—but open. He identifies with the Tarot in Renaissance Europe when the cards were used for playing games. The Renaissance is a period that inspires his own art and corresponds to the time of European conquest of the Americas, a recurring theme in his work. Tarot cards became associated with divination and the occult several hundred years later.

His own Tarot deck, Tarot Neocolonial de las Américas, depicts 500 years of colonialization and conquests in Latin America.” He writes, “Like Astrology, the images from the Tarot remind us of our inherited Western world fictions and alternative belief systems, which have influenced our culture for millennia. Beyond that, it also points towards a universal set of archetypes that allows us to explore and re-interpret our current age, from a holistic perspective, viewing world history and our own lives as cyclically interconnected.

“I see art as a creative attempt to recover some of our fading memories and as an antidote to our intolerable collective amnesia and superfluous distracted consumer media that keeps us disconnected from the natural world and our human psyche. Ultimately, I make art as a way to know myself and connect my own story with the larger story of humanity.”

Patrick’s narratives are becoming more personal but still rooted in art history and his concern for the broader contemporary world. Born in New York and growing up in Puerto Rico in the 80s and 90s he was steeped in Hispanic culture as well as the distracting contemporary consumer culture.

In an interview for the PBS station WHYY in Philadelphia in conjunction with his Arcanas exhibition, he said, “Me being a half-Irish American, half-Puerto Rican? Well, I can relate to McDonald’s, but I can also relate to Catholic iconography, you know.” There’s a bit of Irish humor in there, as well.

As an Irish-American who grew up in a town south of Boston known as the “Irish Riviera”, I didn’t pursue my Irish heritage until later in life and now hold dual citizenship with the U.S. and Ireland. Patrick keeps “McGrath” in his name and he and his brother keep thinking about visiting Ireland. I gave him a little nudge, hoping that he’ll discover another rich cultural resource in his Irish heritage as he continues to explore the universality of human experience.