An Essay By Mark Ewart

Declan O’Mahony’s paintings are driven and inspired by the very materials of their creation. The sheer phys­icality of the work brings with it a living and breath­ing tactility, which initially, appears to be autonomous and self-referential. These paintings have at their very core, a desire to detach from the encumbrance of il­lusion and representation. There is also a weight of knowledge and experience, which underpins the work, a considerable awareness of the tradition of painter­ly abstraction and how its role has influenced his art practice for over 20 years.

Early in his development as an artist O’Mahony was in­fluenced greatly by American artists such as Hoffman, de Kooning, Pollock and Rothko who were leaders of the Abstract Expressionist movement. He encountered other names such as Jules Olitsky, Walter Darby Bannard, Frie­del Dzubas, and Larry Poons after his move to Berlin in 1986 and it was then that the primacy of the painted sur­face - which abstraction most readily accommodates - was planted. Berlin, provided O’Mahony with the opportunity to engage with established artists and visit exciting gal­leries and major collections, in a city which he saw as very much at the cultural forefront. But more so than this, O’Mahony was also energised by the momentous political and social upheaval associated with the tearing down of the Berlin wall.

In 1989 he embarked upon a twelve-month period of travel, working and exhibiting along the way. That year he encountered a group of aboriginal artists in Australia around the time of the country’s Bicentennial. The artists that O’ Mahony met were outraged at the white Australians who had stolen and duly ignored their customs and heritage. The understandably disenfranchised aboriginal artists, who were keenly aware that the festivities going on around them had little or nothing to do with their own culture sparked O’Mahony’s empathy. This experience and the one in Berlin beforehand found resonance with the continuing division in his native Ireland.

These events were a liberation for the 28-year old artist. The Australian encounter was contiguous with subsequent stays in Hawaii and the USA, in that they opened up the inspiration of landscape to him. But it was not a literal re­cord of place that was of concern at this time, rather it was a deeper connection with it’s essence or spirit. This left an imprint on his mind of vast sprawling vistas, a scorching sun and intense, earthy colours. These encounters acted to copper-fasten the primacy of the painted surface as stand-alone elements in his paintings.

The point of abstraction is that is unfettered by the need to validate and explain the world around us in purely lit­eral terms. For O’Mahony abstraction has a spiritual ele­ment akin to that found within a temple or a church, with a serene atmosphere he professes to be exhilarating. This awareness and sensitivity is part of the attraction to being an artist. Being able, in a Blakean sense, to see beauty in even the most anonymous of places and to express these experiences in ways that transcends words, is a powerful thing. This ability for abstraction to move, as O’Mahony himself proffered, ‘beyond words and into silence’, leads to a level of contemplation which facilitates a deeper un­derstanding of things. This clearing of conscious thought is central to the production of purist abstraction where conceptual or visual influences are absorbed into the evo­lution of a unique visual language.

Much of Declan O’Mahony’s recent work has utilised acrylic polymers. The polymer has a viscosity that allows for a build up of texture while retaining transparency in a manner that watercolour or commercial acrylic cannot manage. Inks are used then to stain the polymer and al­ter its hue. The dilution of the polymer in terms of con­sistency is varied so as to exploit alternative methods of application, be it poured, squeezed, sprayed or when dry, physically collaged onto the canvas. In the spirit of adap­tation embraced from his American influences, O’Mahony experiments with the paint solutions, modifying their properties to achieve the desired effect. This process of invention and adaptation and how it leads to new direc­tions and discoveries, is something of vital importance to the discerning practitioner of abstraction.

There is a purity and honesty to the works of this painter that taps into an ever-unfolding continuum which seems to know no boundaries.

September 2004