Leonard Sexton, one of Ireland’s most renowned contemporary artists presents his new collection entitled "Broken Halos". Dublin-based artist Leonard has been working on this collection for a number of years and it marks a significant turning point in Leonard’s career.
Sexton has been painting for over 25 years and for the first time since he began painting, his new body of work Broken Halos will be kept together as a collection. A prominent art collector discovered Leonard’s work and on meeting with the artist the collector was very excited with the project and suggested that it should be kept together as a body of work and exhibited in that way. The collector was so enthusiastic about Sexton’s work that he has become a patron to Leonard and has committed to making the work accessible to a larger public audience. Not only will it be on exhibit in Dublin this July but will also tour to New York and London over the next 3 years.
This is also an exciting success for the Blue Leaf Gallery who are delighted to have achieved such a result for Sexton, an artist who they have worked with for 7 years. This is the first solo exhibition that Blue Leaf gallery will tour outside Ireland.
The 15 8ft x 8 ft canvasses will be on exhibit in the Atrium in the OPW, Dublin for three weeks from 15 th July to the 1st August. The exhibition which opens on Tuesday 15th July at 6pm is kindly supported by Thomas Barton Reserve wines.
LEONARD SEXTON In today's art world, the space that exists for painters is one that has, to a large degree, been carved out by artists themselves. Confounding predictions of its demise, painting has not only survived, but thrives. Moving from a position where the very concept of applying oil paint to canvas was cast into doubt, as an art form dependent on readings involving emotion and empathy, painting today enjoys a revival that is a testament both to its own resilience and that of its practitioners. Theorists and critics held that video art was objective and analytical, while painting, for the most part, remained an untamable, indefinable thing, a visceral and emotional experience for artist and viewer alike. These divisions are not really tenable: every medium lends itself equally to qualities of expressiveness, if expressiveness is what motivates an artist, or to objectivity and ‘rationality’, if that is the motivating force. What painting—particularly abstract painting--provides today is what it has always been good at--a capturing of transient thoughts, feelings and emotions, in a remarkable (and in its own way technically complex) medium. Leonard Sexton explores painting in his new series of canvases, entitled Broken Halos; these are abstract paintings on a grand scale. The artist builds up layer upon layer, using drips, accidents, the transparency of linseed oil, and the opaqueness of pigment, in these intensely felt works. They are explorations of the vocabulary of painting. Although Sexton starts with depictions of the human figure, as the layers of paint are painstakingly added, the works evolve into something else. Sexton succeeds in creating paintings that are both personal and monumental. The Broken Halos canvases remain within the Modernist canon: in their powerful abstract quality, in the importance of mark-making and gesture, in their lack of narrative, and also because what happens in the top left corner is as important as what happens in the bottom right section. Sexton is a courageous artist, working within the late twentieth century tradition of De Kooning, Pollock and Morris Louis. With single-minded determination, and tenacity of purpose, he has produced works that are confident, resolute and true to the sense, spirit and humanity of the artist.