There was a large painting resting against the wall. I had never seen a monotone painting by him before. The three sections, which had balanced the constructed harmonies of the image, were struggling with a wall of heavily painted, almost lacquered luminous black, which strove to expand beyond the confines of its rectangle. The upper section, a dull patina compared to this intense surface, the undersection another tonality of black, with hints of spotted colour underpainting, glowing with intensity. This was the process unveiled, the beginning of what might be another encrusted surface of paint, but without the frequency of tone and colour that would define the visual character of the image. This Work could stand alone in most exhibitions of contemporary painting, a solitary invocation of Abstract Expressionism on a grand scale, yet it was only the initial moment in a process beyond the apparent simplicities of such work. The unfinished works seem to defy the eventual linear marks, when the surfaces are themselves articulated by the painterly process. It's as if the process echoes the eventual marks. The United Field Painting, or UFP, triptych, which hung beside it, exemplified the nature of these changes and perceptions. It shared the same scale, the warm encrusted surfaces of swirling underpainting, and the same precise balance of the related spaces. The muted sap greens with linear asymmetrical geometric movements inferred simplicity, yet refused to conform to the obvious nature of such constructs. It was the intuitive stroke, confirming a geometrical form, yet mutating the simplicity by the indigenous surface quality of the paint. This reflective ambience, mutated through the underpainting surfaces of black and white, disavows definition. It seems to inherently characterise its own motivation, while stretching the limits of its initial appearance. This conflict, a stretching of the boundaries of form, within the painted surface, integrates the image into the second section, while electrifying the nature of such a balance.
The ogham-inspired lower green verticals, appeared to almost submerge into the white creamy surfaces, as if the stones upon which they were originally engraved had become porous layers of sun dried limestone. There is a definite feeling of light and heat to these surfaces, with their emotive subterranean black. The occasional wisp of the brush, as a shadowed mark, which occasionally suffuses the surface in a solid line, an ascending score of integrated notations, steadily articulates a determined control over the painted surface plain. These wavering yet solid verticals are also horizontal apertures, fleeting sightings of green and red marks, amidst t he meadow of their enclosure.
The third rectangle, a black, almost flat surface, with the faded memory of impassioned weight above it is sprinkled with the opposite balancing process. The under painting appears to have been a cacophony of colour, a warm palette of muted yellows and reds. These patches of pink, red and green spots shine through like stellar notations. The black suppresses a surface, where the colour beneath still breathes its spasmodic memory as a fluctuating natural form.
Ciarán Bennett, President of the International Association of Art Critics (Ireland), Irish Arts Review, Autum 2005, Vol. 22 No.