| Cormac O'Leary |
Paintings evolve over years of gathered images, motifs emerging
and receding, stories being retold and reimagined. The Friday still-life was
painted in the hub of a wintry city, ghostly creaking on the studio floorboards,
a street din of traffic and voices outside. More recent work was accompanied
by birdsong and leaves rustling in the breeze. Visitants wandered onto one canvas, from a dusky wood. They lingered in the memory like shades.
As an artist I return to places over time, picking up the threads of a visual story. Scenes change but are also restored, reafirmed. Places are always renewing themselves- a shelf of rock by a thundering sea, beaches in a winter light, fields overshadowed by mountains, forests in seasonal flux. I draw the image out, build it up in waves of colour, try to strike the right note; the afterglow of memory