Ronan Walsh | |
|---|---|
| Born | 15 May 1958 Dublin, Ireland |
| Education | National College of Art and Design |
| Known for | Painter, graphic artist, photographer |
| Movement | Abstract expressionism, expressionism |
Ronan Walsh (born 15 May 1958) [1] who represented Ireland at the 1988 Art Junction in Nice and has exhibited work throughout Europe and North America.
Walsh was born and raised in Dublin. Painting from an early age, the teenage artist was encouraged to develop his art by his father, the artist Owen Walsh, with whom he was reunited at sixteen following thirteen years of estrangement. He first exhibited work at seventeen whilst living in the Netherlands, shortly after which followed a series of one-man exhibitions in Dublin. [2] Walsh continued traveling, exhibiting and living throughout Europe during the eighties, using Dublin as his base until, following a brief marriage to a Canadian artist, he relocated to Toronto in 1990 and became a citizen in 1994. He now divides his time between Ireland and Canada.
Walsh graduated early from NCAD in 1984, having been skipped two years due to a number of previously well-regarded exhibitions in Dublin and the Netherlands that received support from the poet Edward James. During his time at college he was tutored by the artist Sean Scully. Between 1984 and 1988 Walsh was closely involved with Temple Bar Gallery and Studios and Project Arts Centre in Dublin, exhibiting at both and locating his studio at the former. In 1987 he was elected Chairman of Independent Artists, founded by his father in 1959 as an alternative to the more conservative Royal Hibernian Academy. In 1987 he also organized art classes and exhibitions with the Simon Community for the homeless. [3] During the late eighties Walsh exhibited with "Le Nouveau Crie Artists Association" at Le Centre Culturel et Aerospatiale in Toulouse, France and in Ghent, Belgium. During this time he also exhibited at the Project Arts Centre in Dublin. In 1988 Walsh was chosen to represent Ireland at Art Junction in Nice, France. Walsh held several exhibitions in the nineties, primarily in North America, including shows at the Jadite Galleries in New York and at Bond Latin Art in San Francisco. He also exhibited in Toronto and in Taylor Galleries in Dublin. [4] Walsh has also taught art in Canada over several years.
Walsh first exhibited paintings at the age of seventeen, drawing attention both from the Irish Times and the Irish Independent. [5] His early work, primarily landscapes with people, possessed the lyrical, semi-abstract, slightly Surrealist aesthetic that could then be seen in the contemporary work of older Irish artists such as Patrick Collins, Louis le Brocquy and Walsh's own father, the artist Owen Walsh. Subsequent to graduating from NCAD, the setting and the aesthetic of the paintings begins to change. The semi-abstract, pastoral landscapes are replaced with more figurative depictions of urban settings; the early romantic lyricism gives way to a harder-edged Expressionist style articulated through thick, heavily textured paintwork and the utilization of found objects. At this time, 'his handling of paint is raw, his approach is physical and aggressive,' [6] But Walsh's style was not traditionally Expressionist: 'actually there is very little of the archetypal German Expressionist about Walsh, his use of colour is more comparable to the French.' [7] Towards the end of the eighties, Walsh becomes affiliated critically with the Neo-expressionist and Transavantgarde movements in Europe. The shift from abstraction "towards figuration [8] and greater realism becomes most pronounced in the 1990s, a decade in which Walsh also shifts his focus from the urban to a more natural setting of forests and beaches.
This concentration on natural settings and subject matter has continued in Walsh's post-millennial work, in which the figure of the Camargue horse and the West of Ireland feature both as sources of inspiration and as thematic motifs. The turn of the century has also seen a return towards the abstraction that had characterized some of his earlier work. Discussing his 2009 show 'Camargue,' Joanne Savage wrote:
Ronan Walsh's work retains a tension between abstraction and figuration that recalls the work of Jack B. Yeats in moments like 'The Singing Horseman' and abstract expressionists like Willem de Kooning. There is the same vigorous, thickly applied paint and scenes where subjective expression overrides careful or conservative rendering of the subject. [9]
The affinity with de Kooning was also recognized by David Moos:
Walsh displays his embrace of Willem de Kooning's hot palette of red, pink, orange, Joan Mitchell's tangle of feinting and darting brushstrokes, and Norman Bluhm's thinned, dripping and running oil residue...[he] is an artist who is eking out his own space in the impossibly congested territory of abstraction today. [10]
Abstract expressionism in the United States emerged as a distinct art movement in the immediate aftermath of World War II and gained mainstream acceptance in the 1950s, a shift from the American social realism of the 1930s influenced by the Great Depression and Mexican muralists. The term was first applied to American art in 1946 by the art critic Robert Coates. Key figures in the New York School, which was the center of this movement, included such artists as Arshile Gorky, Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, Norman Lewis, Willem de Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Clyfford Still, Robert Motherwell and Theodoros Stamos among others.
Action painting, sometimes called "gestural abstraction", is a style of painting in which paint is spontaneously dribbled, splashed or smeared onto the canvas, rather than being carefully applied. The resulting work often emphasizes the physical act of painting itself as an essential aspect of the finished work or concern of its artist.
Franz Kline was an American painter. He is associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement of the 1940s and 1950s. Kline, along with other action painters like Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, John Ferren, and Lee Krasner, as well as local poets, dancers, and musicians came to be known as the informal group, the New York School. Although he explored the same innovations to painting as the other artists in this group, Kline's work is distinct in itself and has been revered since the 1950s.
Elaine Marie Catherine de Kooning was an Abstract Expressionist and Figurative Expressionist painter in the post-World War II era. She wrote extensively on the art of the period and was an editorial associate for Art News magazine.
Painters Eleven was a group of abstract artists active in Canada between 1953 and 1960. They are associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement.
The 9th Street Art Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture is the official title artist Franz Kline hand-lettered onto the poster he designed for the Ninth Street Show. Now considered historic, the artist-led exhibition marked the formal debut of Abstract Expressionism, and the first American art movement with international influence. The School of Paris, long the headquarters of the global art market, typically launched new movements, so there was both financial and cultural fall-out when all the excitement was suddenly emanating from New York. The postwar New York avant-garde, artists like Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock, would soon become "art stars," commanding large sums and international attention. The Ninth Street Show marked their "stepping-out," and that of nearly 75 other artists, including Harry Jackson, Helen Frankenthaler, Michael Goldberg, Joan Mitchell, Grace Hartigan, Robert De Niro Sr., John Ferren, Philip Guston, Elaine de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Franz Kline, Ad Reinhardt, David Smith, Milton Resnick, Joop Sanders, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, and many others who were then mostly unknown to an art establishment that ignored experimental art without a ready market.
William Scott was a prominent abstract painter from Northern Ireland, known for his themes of still life, landscape and female nudes. He is the most internationally celebrated of 20th-century Ulster painters. His early life was the subject of the film Every Picture Tells a Story, made by his son James Scott.
Owen Walsh (1933–2002) was an Irish painter and graphic designer.
Harold Barling Town, D.Litt was a Canadian artist who worked in many different media, but is best known for his abstract paintings.
Michael Goldberg was an American abstract expressionist painter and teacher known for his gestural action paintings, abstractions and still-life paintings. A retrospective show, "Abstraction Over Time: The Paintings of Michael Goldberg", was shown at MOCA Jacksonville in Florida from 9/21/13 to 1/5/14. His work was seen in September 2007 in a solo exhibition at Knoedler & Company in New York City, as well as several exhibitions at Manny Silverman Gallery in Los Angeles. Additionally, a survey of Goldberg's work is exhibited at the University Art Museum at California State University, Long Beach since September 2010.
Joop Sanders was a Dutch-American painter, educator, and founding member of the American Abstract Expressionist group. He was the youngest member of the first generation of the New York School.
20th-century Western painting begins with the heritage of late-19th-century painters Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and others who were essential for the development of modern art. At the beginning of the 20th century, Henri Matisse and several other young artists including the pre-cubist Georges Braque, André Derain, Raoul Dufy and Maurice de Vlaminck, revolutionized the Paris art world with "wild", multi-colored, expressive landscapes and figure paintings that the critics called Fauvism. Matisse's second version of The Dance signified a key point in his career and in the development of modern painting. It reflected Matisse's incipient fascination with primitive art: the intense warm color of the figures against the cool blue-green background and the rhythmical succession of the dancing nudes convey the feelings of emotional liberation and hedonism.
Niall McCormack is an Irish painter. Since the 1980s, he exhibited in England, Italy, France, Sweden, the US, and Ireland.
George McNeil was an American abstract expressionist painter.
Corinne Michelle West (1908–1991) was an American painter; she also used the names Mikael and Michael West. She was an Abstract Expressionist.
Ruth Brandt was an Irish artist and teacher, who was known for drawing inspiration from nature for her work.
Milton Resnick was an American artist noted for abstract paintings that coupled scale with density of incident. It was not uncommon for some of the largest paintings to weigh in excess three hundred pounds, almost all of it pigment. He had a long and varied career, lasting about sixty-five years. He produced at least eight hundred canvases and eight thousand works on paper and board.
Pauline Cummins is an Irish sculptor, painter, performance and video artist. She was a lecturer at the National College of Art and Design from 1992 - 2014.
Gordon Rayner was a Canadian abstract expressionist painter. His way of creating art was idiosyncratic and characterized by constant innovation and often by transformation of his medium. Later, he integrated realism into his practice.
Diana CopperwhiteRHA is an Irish painter. She is a member of Aosdána, an elite Irish association of artists.
| Authority control databases: Artists |
|---|
