Dermot Browne
Art helps people reconnect to themselves and their world.
I engage people in what they see and what they don’t see.
That is in my opinion the best “use” for abstract paintings.
EVERYTHING NOW…..
…………is of course the title of a song by Arcade Fire……
………But it does also serve a description of what it feels like for me to be a painter; I’m interested in everything all at the same time. To suggest that my interests are less is just not true and doesn’t do justice to the ambition in these works.
So abstraction then becomes the best tool or pathway for exploring everything. And that is what I hope you find here; an exploration. Many of the painting styles that I admire the most allow the audience in, into the process, and the making itself, and as such, many of these works (at least to me) appear to still be “happening” in front of your eyes.
In terms of subjects (yes I said I was interested in everything…) it should be easy to see from works like “Bio-Flow 1” or “Weltschmerz”, I am interested in scales of visual description - these could be cosmic or micro-cosmic moments where processes are unfolding in front of us.
But abstract paintings are problematic because they tend to sit on the picture plane and feel a bit flat sometimes, so I go to great lengths to try to create a dialogue between that flatness (of the canvas) and the illusion of depth in traditional figurative painting as with the layering in the “Mantra” painting.
Yet if someone is interested in Everything they are by definition also interested in Nothing or emptiness, and there are clear hints all around the room here at The Richmond Revival that I am interested in and practice a number of Asian arts and philosophies. “Dharma Bastard” sarcastically takes the subtitle “with strong Zen underpinning” from another artist’s blurb.
Included here are two works entitled “Spelunking for Red/Blue”, and for those who never heard the word before, that just refers to potholing or cave-exploration, which serves as a very good metaphor for what I do as a painter; it’s a bit like feeling your way around in the dark looking for the surface of the wall so that you can find a new direction.
It’s a searching -
I make paintings that are a result of searching for forms that blend elemental forces, and the resulting anxiety that stems from the separation from those same forces. Often these objects appear as urbanistic, patterned abstraction that own a lot to Mid-Century Modernist painting. Sometimes the paintings lift above what I imagine I am doing, and as such I feel that all “plans” or “processes” are less important than being connected to what is happening in the present moment as I work.
Patterns feel right.
My urge to present empty spacious abstraction often gives way to a sort of urban or mechanistic patterning. These patterns I assume, come out of a childhood soaked with the sight of internal circuit boards from my Father's T.V repair business, strewn across the floor as he often worked late into the night to fix a T.V set to get £50 to keep us afloat that week.
But if abstraction and geometric patterning might be understood to be my own search for (creative) order and peace, then I can have no doubt that there is also a place in my practice for all of those mixed, figurative, images that come out too. These can be layered, toxic, ghostly images that are troubled enough to easily balance out the cultivated calm of other works.
Amongst those images, occasionally a Pop or popular culture reference will come out. Comic book imagery, collage and other urban sources find their place in a painting practice that no longer hopes for either clearly defined borders nor definitions.