2 Paintings in New York

I have 2 paintings going on display this week in a group exhibition at Field Projects Gallery in New York. The exhibition opens on Thursday the 5th of May at 6pm and runs until June 11th. Jesse David Penridge is curating the exhibition and there are 13 of us exhibiting in the show titled Signaling to ^ the Cipher ^ Towards a Segway. The 2 paintings that I have in Field Projects are below:

Half in the World of Form, Oil on Canvas, 55cm x 35cm, 2015

Red, Oil on Canvas, 17cm x 16cm, 2015

This link goes to the gallery website page for the show, it has all exhibiting artists listed and a brief about the theme of the show - Field Projects Gallery.

'Beneath the Dock Leaf' Video Documentation

I ran through the exhibition during the week and did a little video documentation of the show in The Dunamaise Arts Centre. I meant to do it for the previous showing of Beneath the Dock Leaf  but I forgot to charge my camera battery and I think it's probably more fitting that I captured this one because for the moment it's the last planned solo exhibition of Beneath the Dock Leaf. I'm planning a new project and will start working on that in the next couple of weeks and while it will be the same style and focus on the same themes it will be running under a new working title.

As for Beneath the Dock Leaf, the works in that body will be going out into group shows the first of which is in March at The Presentation Arts Centre in Enniscorthy, County Wexford. The exhibition is curated by artist John Busher.

'Beneath the Dock Leaf' by Pat Byrne from Pat Byrne on Vimeo.

New Studio in Dublin

I have just moved into a new studio in Dublin. I signed up for a membership with A4 Sounds a few weeks ago and got a studio last week. I'm delighted to be back based in Dublin but with the residency in August and the exhibition last month I didn't want to break up my work time with moving. I found working on my own over the summer tough after being part of a busy atmosphere at Emmett House so I'm happy to be part of a group environment again.

There's a good number of multidisciplinary artists based in the building and there's always a lot of activity around. I'm hoping to be back painting this week but with a few small jobs to get done I'll just be working on a piece that I started about three weeks ago. It was originally intended to go into Beneath the Dock Leaf but I wasn't happy with it and restarted it the week after the exhibition opening.

No title yet but this is the newest painting so far.

I'll have a profile page on the A4 Sounds website soon so once that's up I'll post a link.

Some of the New Work

I have some of the new paintings documented and uploaded on this post. I haven't uploaded them to my website yet though, there's more of a glare on some of them than I thought originally so I'm going to re-shoot a few of them.

Some of the newer pieces were much more still life based work and focus more on trinkets that are sometimes associated with the figures of folklore. They also served as a way to introduce new figures to the work at a later stage.

Some of the paintings proved more difficult than others to photograph, I won't need to document all of them again but there are 3 of the 5 pieces shown here that I'll re-take. The bottom painting, To Sing or Whistle, is gone into the Laois County Collection.

A Silver Shilling or Golden Ashes, Oil on Canvas, 20cm x 17cm, 2015

Merely on a Spree, Oil on Canvas, 26cm x 18cm, 2015

Possessor of Great Riches, Oil on Canvas, 34cm x 28cm, 2015

Red, Oil on Canvas, 17cm x 16cm, 2015

To Sing or Whistle, Oil on Canvas, 56cm x 41cm, 2015

'Beneath the Dock Leaf' Installation Shots

Beneath the Dock Leaf finished yesterday. I was very happy with the feedback on the work, this was the first exhibition of the work since I finished the MFA in June and it was the first solo show since Excursion last October. There was also more paintings on show than during my MFA show, in the old Frawley's building I installed 9 pieces but at The Hyde Bridge Gallery I hung 14 works. There were several new paintings that I worked on over the summer but a big difference with these newer paintings was that I have been working in a space on my own so there wasn't anyone to ask for feedback and had to trust my own judgement. I was told too that there was a big attendance at the exhibition for Culture Night.

I really enjoyed working in The Hyde Bridge Gallery. It's a really great gallery consisting of 2 rooms and a corridor space. The 2 rooms contain a fireplace each. This prompted me to work on 2 pieces specifically for this exhibition and while I had both on display only was installed to interact with a fireplace. There's one wall in the first room that is almost entirely made up of a window and in the second room are 2 windows situated right in the corner providing both rooms with strong natural light. Between the windows, fireplaces and the fact that the gallery is made up of 3 spaces provided an interesting challenge during installation, making me consider which paintings were going together in which rooms and also how one room would lead into the next while trying to avoid very literal narratives.

Fairy and Folktales of Ireland by W.B Yeats served as a source of research for my work and as The Hyde Bridge Gallery is part of The Yeats Society Building in Sligo it was a fitting venue given the theme of my current work.

I meant to get a video of the exhibition but my camera wasn't charged, I'll do it for the next show. I was contact by The Dunamaise Arts Centre in Portlaoise on the 4th of September about the possibility of exhibiting Beneath the Dock Leaf there sometime in 2016 so I'll be speaking with them soon about that.

I'll be posting documentation of the individual works over the next few weeks on my website and adding new pieces to the body of work.

New Solo Exhibition - 'Beneath the Dock Leaf'

I have a new solo exhibition opening this Tuesday (September, 8th) at the Hyde Bridge Gallery in Sligo. The show will be an expansion of my MFA show and is a continuation of the superstition and folklore focus while hinting at some of the new characters to be introduced.It opens at 6pm on Tuesday and runs through Culture Night until the 19th of September. The work in this show is relatively small scale, at the moment I'm unsure of how many works will be on show, I'm looking to hand between 10 and 12. While at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre I was talking to the director and he used to be director of the Hyde Bridge Gallery. He was saying 10 paintings would fill it and I do like a decent amount of space around each work. 

 Half in the World of Form, Oil on Canvas, 2015

The title, Beneath the Dock Leaf , is a reference to the writings of Lady Francesca Speranza Wilde. In her book Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms and Superstitions of Ireland, Wilde tells of leprechauns being seen at work under dock leaves. However the fact that not so many people believes in these fairy folk anymore means that they are effectively unemployed and I wanted something to resemble the saying of "behind closed doors" as a title for these figures of superstition that gave way to a world of science and rationality

The New Baal Fires, Oil on Canvas, 2015  

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The New Work

In 2013 I started my MFA at the National College of Art and Design where I changed the focus of my work completely. During the 3 years between the completion of my BA and the beginning of the MFA there were several times where I had considered changing direction and looking at folklore as the theme of my paintings. What I had been working on previously, I felt, had enough momentum left that I didn't want to just end it with a sudden halt, I think it was coming to an end but it still had some life left.

While studying at NCAD it gave me a chance to take a step back and not worry about necessarily working towards a deadline and separate myself from the older work. During this time I began researching superstitions, folklore and mythology. Unsure at the early stages of first year where I wanted to push the work, I started out looking at natural based superstitions surrounding animals and trees, such as magpies serving as an omen of ill luck, depending on numbers or the consequences of interfering with a hawthorn tree. Towards the end of first year I started working much more figuratively, this work is what I would concentrate on for second year, my MFA show and for the foreseeable future. The following images are of the work that I had on show at Frawley's, 36 Thomas Street, Dublin for the end MFA Graduation Exhibition in June this year. 

Ash and Ember, Oil on Canvas, 39cm x 28cm, Pat Byrne, 2015

                            

                                

Half in the World of Form, Oil on Canvas, 55cm x 35cm, Pat Byrne, 2015

                               

       Industrious, Oil on Canvas, 41cm x 31cm, Pat Byrne, 2014

                                           

Leaves, Oil on Canvas, 55cm x 35cm, Pat Byrne, 2015

Masquerading, Oil on Canvas, 25cm x 18cm, Pat Byrne, 2015

Now, Look Around, Oil on Canvas, 21cm x 17cm, Pat Byrne, 2014

One Who Holds November Sacred, Oil on Canvas, 38cm x 28cm, Pat Byrne, 2015

The New Baal Fires, Oil on Canvas, 57cm x 40cm, Pat Byrne, 2015

The Result of Solitude, Oil on Canvas, 36cm x 25cm, Pat Byrne, 2015

Leprechauns and the Púca were the mythological figures that I decided to focus on and towards the end of the year I introduced the Fear Dearg to the paintings. I intend to bring other characters to the project, the next one is on the way and hopefully another new spirit in August during my residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre. I'll be updating my website soon with these paintings plus others.

Links:

Billion Journal Review of Dublin Graduate Shows

Paint Tube

patbyrneartist.com

Work on the Residency

This is some of the work that I have completed since starting the residency in April.

My work revolves heavily around the exploration of oil paint as a medium, its versatility and its surface quality through the use of oil mediums, applications and work methods with a core theme being the idea of playing with scale and ambiguity, working this way to veil the connection between the painting and source material from the viewer.