Visiting artist Donal Moloney.

Visiting artist Donal Moloney presented his stunning works yesterday (30th March 2015) during our group hangout with Caroline. A rich source of information that I needed to be stored. It was a real feast to the eye and vaguely I was reminded of artist HEW LOCKE. His ideas were most intriguing in the sense that there were elements of mystery prevailing. 

I like the rather complexed/detailed and brightly coloured paintings which were abstract yet on a closer look figurative as well. There was a refined touch to his works which also showed elaboration/intricateness and a clever grouping of different narratives. I enjoyed the playful attitude that prevails where he sometimes introduces elements of humour to shift the viewer's attention. He says "even if the painting is small you can hide little things inside that would shift your reading of the painting".

His strange compositions "where the eye can't simply rest" stores crammed information that can only invite the viewer to look again and again for a long time where each discovery is relished one after the other. His experiments of layering of images on top of images is most fascinating as he himself claims "almost like images are cancelling each other out". And he keeps adding more and more "until like the painting will collapse"

He play around a lot with scale from rather large canvases to postcard size miniatures. Also, I find a pattern in his research and making where he started with very large canvases and has evolved towards minute detailed very small works. His process is very important too where he uses abundant materials like pigment, charcoal, acrylic paint,pastels, watercolours, resins, oil-pastels,gesso and his experiments are quite broad as oxidising surfaces, diluting acrylics, obtaining stains from different sources as even dipping canvas into water, using tools like squeegees, etching and scratching the surfaces to obtain layers, marbling which is later scanned and painted on,etc.

He asserts that he has no real plan at the start of the work and he cannot say when it can also round up and say that the work is finished. He relies a lot on "his eyes" to "be his own critic". I also like the remark he made on working on individual figures and then grouping them together and make them look like "stickers".

 http://365artists365days.com/2014/10/04/donal-moloney-london-england/

                  Donal Moloney, Shrines.