Selected paintings being exhibited at Arcadia
This is a few of the paintings being exhibited, to give you an idea of the range. Most have significant texture and luminosity and look much better “in the flesh”. So this website is no substitute for actually visiting the exhibition.
For prices and a better idea of size, please see the section above called “Exhibition Catalogue & Price list”. Nearly all the works are in oils and framed or otherwise ready to hang.
1. Beach at Dawn
2. This abstract oil painting has the broad shape of an atmospheric landscape, and the traditional gilt frame encourages the mind to see it that way, but on closer inspection it has none of the normal features of a landscape. This leaves it open to myriad interpretations. Textured oil paint.
3. The Whaling Ship, after JMW Turner
4. Sea Storm Nocturne
5. Curran Point at Dusk #1. A favourite point on my evening walk on my favourite beach.. I especially love walking in clouds reflected on wet sand.
6. “The Head of the Lake” . A blend of lakes, but Hillsborough is definitely in there.
7. Epiphany in red ochre
8. Bejewelled Joy. Highly textured impasto
17. Study in Red
9. The Ghost of Mary Graham. After a famous portrait by Gainsborough. Mary Graham was an aristocratic beauty and darling of Georgian London. Very soon after the portrait was finished, she contracted TB, waned and died. Were she to have a ghost, it’s nice to think that it might resemble that moment at the height of her powers.
10. The Deluge. Yellow is the colour of hope. Oil with plaster & alcohol ink
11. Interpreted differently by different people and at different times. Intended to evoke a range of emotions, depending on mood and circumstance, from calm, to optimism to fear.
12. Land, Water, Sky
14. Epiphany in Teal
16. The Last of the Light
If Gold Tarnished 1 - Everyone knows that gold doesn’t tarnish. It’s its constancy which gives it monetary value. But it is variation and aberration which creates life, and I find the way things change beautiful. I am drawn to the colour gold, like everyone else, and seek to “improve” on the one thing about gold I personally regard as a weakness.
82. Sun through clouds over Skerries
Donegal Over the Water - view from the north coast train outside Derry
25. Viridian Vectors
Breathing deeply. Hand enamelled frame
21. Under the sea. Oil. Hand enamelled frame
Out there
83. Dawn over Skerries
Curran Point #3 Portrush
45. Through decay to the sublime. I intended this as a calm, meditative piece. I find the patina of age and entropy to be beautiful for many materials including rusted steel. I wanted to contrast that kind of beauty with the sublime beauty of a clear but graduated blue sky. Stone also develops beautiful patinas, but rusted steel offered a more complementary colour, and the association with heavy industry adds to the message that there is beauty everywhere. I like partial framing, partial limitation of views. The corner where the steel planes meet each other and the view of the sea becomes a focal point from which the painting spreads out - mainly upwards and left to right. This directionality creates an uplifting sense of possibility (for me) and occurs in much of my work.
If Gold Tarnished 2
48. Pensive
71. Mount Lurig from the land
44. Life Dances
59. Abstract inspired by the Aurora Borealis
Tactile geometric objects which can be arranged and re-arranged in multiple ways
80. Sandbank, Portrush East Strand
49. Harvest
65.The Sea
64 Rain
Swell, Swirl, Crash - Runkerry to Giant’s Causeway
Between, Affordable Art corner
13. Darkening Skies, aka At Sea
77. Glendun River in Winter