Past Exhibition > Cormac O'Leary - Introduction
Welcome Current Exhibitions Upcoming Exhibitions Past Exhibitions Available Works Contact/Find Us		Cormac O'Leary 'Marina Series and Other Paintings' 9 November - 30 November "Continual greeting and leave-taking; for all that we encounter between a darkness and a darkness..." It is appropriate that the above quotation should be haunting me right now as I gather my thoughts on the paintings of Cormac O'Leary. Also, it is fitting that this beautiful and eloquent fragment remains anonymous to me - unclaimed baggage in the lost property department or a loose page from an unbound book of poetry, fallen from its dusty shelf. In a sense this is what Cormac O'Leary's work taps into, as his imagery focuses on the places and objects that are for him, imbued with magical resonance. For us all, the ebb and flow of our daily existence is shaped by the memories, sensations and emotions gathered from the people we have met and the places we have visited. The imagery then that runs through this exhibition takes its cue from the artists' interest in the conflict between the public and private domains within a community. The Marina and harbour areas in Cork City provide the main inspiration, with O'Leary musing upon their multifarious roles as a place for recreation but also a historical heartland embroiled in a loosing battle with modernising forces and economic change. The movement of the ships, the displacement and reflections upon the water, are all bound up in the artist's affinity with the area. Within the languid paintings of the Night Harbour and Marina Nocturne series, we see his fascination with the red-hulled ships that gracefully channel their way into the living centre of this proud city. Romantics see aesthetic beauty bound inextricably with perfection. In landscape it is the majestic vista unpolluted by houses and telegraph poles. In figure painting, it is the yearning for perfect proportion and exultant natural beauty. If O'Leary were to be seen as a romantic, then he is one that has a healthy grasp on the modern definition of the word. For him, a rusting crane or a concrete platform is beautiful - not only in its own right - but because they seem to invigorate the natural elements. A Yin and Yang partnership that simultaneously validate and cancel each other out, vying for prominence and keeping tension within the composition on a knife-edge. Even though the subject matter changes from river scenes, to still-life to interiors, there is a certain unity of composition that ties all of Cormac O'Leary's paintings together. A coherency of shape, colour and texture that at times comes tantalising close to purist, minimalist abstraction. Pictorial structure and heightened colour recall with great subtlety the work of Piet Mondrian. Lines collide at acute angles, racing across the picture plane only to slam into a steadfast vertical wall or tree trunk. The geometry of light and form distil detail and mask superficiality, leaving a raw uncluttered impression of the scene. At times the power of this work comes from its almost naïve quality - a child-like wonderment at seeing the world as a blur of shapes and colours. O'Leary has spoken of other residual influences in his paintings, such as the aching stillness and "simplicity" of Morandi's still-life's or the "magical" qualities of Seurat's Nocturne drawings. Such comparisons seem appropriate as together they help define an artist who works with accessible imagery, but selects and composes form and space to serve deeper contemplative themes of absence and emotion. The pinnacle of this is demonstrated beautifully in the City Interior paintings, which are based upon rooms within his grandparents' house on Cork's Northside. The hanging coat becoming in his words a "friendly ghost" that haunts the space and acts as a potent symbol for the passage of time. There is a strong emphasis within these paintings upon the tactile qualities of surface texture, which rise, dissipate, shimmer and merge into one. In fact, the working process followed is such that spontaneous use of acrylic paint allows fragments of half-remembered images to emerge from the subconscious and become imbedded in layers of paint. Sketches and photographs complement this process, all united into an integrated and composite whole. And it is this intuitive process itself, which marks out the pattern and direction of the paintings and brings us back to O'Learys heightened receptivity for seeking out the intangible beneath the obvious. The rewards for doing so should be clear to all.
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