Bastard Blue
VOLTA NEW YORK
125 West 18th Street
May 17-21, 2023
The Glorious Between • 150 x 150 cm
For a long time I struggled with blue, for me it was the colour of logic, order, organisation.
And while I’ve nothing against logic, it’s never been how I work.
My process doesn’t do order, my paintings don’t start with a destination.
Instead they’re born in the chaos of the doing, painted on the ground, they evolve, they mutate, depending on the light that day, the music I’m listening to, as I move in constant motion around them.
And that wasn’t blue.
And then, like the lover in a Charlotte Bronte or Jane Austen story that the protagonist first hates but then loves, blue revealed itself.
I started surrounded by the wild elemental scapes of land, sea and sky, between the Beara and the Iveragh on the Atlantic-lashed coasts near Kenmare.
There, looking at its blues, sometimes for days on end, I saw blue wasn’t order or calm, it was wild, seductive, raw, ungrounded.
That it wasn’t one shade, it was a million.
That far from being the reassuring presence of the paintbox, was the maddest, craziest, bastard there was.
That like the sirens of Greek mythology, could change from softness to malevolence in a split second.
And that’s what I wanted to paint.
Read the press release →
The Deep Empty • 150 x150 cms
The Moment & the Memory • 150 x 150 cms
The Unbounding • 150 x 150 cms
Where the Ghosts live • 150 x 150 cms
The Glorious Between • 150 x 150 cms
All that we see or seem is but... A Dream within a Dream • 150 x 150 cms
The Saturation of Moonlight • 150 x 120 cms
Set Adrift on Memory Bliss • 150 x 120 cms
Melting Light. Melting Heart • 150 x 120 cms
Tidal II • 150 x 120 cms
A Coquetish Blush • 140 x 110 cms
Sleepwalking • 120 x 100 cms
Bastard Blue. A review.
‘I remember as a young man making my maiden excursion to New York and seeing for the first time Ad Reinhardt’s Black Paintings from the early sixties in MoMA. I had only known them from illustration and, as I gave them the optical time they required, that pre-conceived notion of their monochrome nature dissolved into a delight of geometry and colour, deep resonant blues and reds, masked initially by the anatomical mechanics of vision.
Giving time to painting, especially abstract painting, in this the age of images is a big ask. One must be self-aware that certain subtleties of tonal colour can only reveal themselves when the retina is afforded the time to adjust its cones and rods to perceive their qualities. And so it is with this suite of paintings by Paul Hughes.
The investment of this optical capital pays back in spades when viewing Hughes work from this series. Every part of the picture surface is blue. The blacks are blue, the whites are blue and the blues are a myriad shades of blue. And arising from these waves of blue a furtive topography seems to suggest itself. Not a static depiction of place but stacked layers of perceptions as if seeing simultaneously through the atmospherics of ‘the night, the light and the half-light’. We glimpse sea, headland, sky, on top of headland, sky and sea. And then the dynamism of the painting rolls over and we returned to joyous abstraction before the process repeats and we are peering into the blue night of place again.
The experiential nature of these paintings are strengthened by their square format. A horizonal canvas would play to the tropes of landscape and foul their mercurial qualities. The square subverts such associations and indicates to the viewer the painting is a place in itself, a place to abide and perceive.’
Patrick T Murphy
Patrick T Murphy is Director of the Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts, Dublin, Ireland.
Prior to that position he was Director of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, USA.
270°
0°
180°
90°
Show Poster
Staccato (Part II)
The Greenacres Art Gallery, Wexford.
April 9, 2022.
Fervent osculation • 200 x 120 cm
The original exhibition ‘Staccato’, was a three-person exhibition by three of Ireland’s foremost contemporary artists; Bridget Flannery, Paul Hughes and Paddy Lennon.
“Paul Hughes’ paintings have always been about capturing what he sees; that is, the playing and shifting between light and dark as you gaze at the horizon. Paul continually pushes the boundaries of his work and the tools of his craft, the intense colours are painstakingly created with raw materials oils, mineral powders, varnishes and his own hands. Paul’s work is held in both public and private collections from West Cork to the UK, New York, Hong Kong & Paris.”
"Dreamers,
they never learn,
they never learn,
beyond the point
of no return
of no return."
My mother always said I was a daydreamer.
She said I would spend hours and hours staring out, lost in my own world.
Silently, standing, dreaming.
My Mother died early in 2020.
And I miss her every day.
And she was right. I am a daydreamer.
Read More →
A Place,
on this Earth.
theDesk, Admiralty, Hong Kong.
June 2021.
Greenane Island, near Kenmare 7 • 80 x 60 cm
‘A Place, on this Earth’ opened at thedesk,
Admiralty in Hong Kong in June, 2021.
Each piece was created standing and staring from one specific longtitude/latitude point (51.862758,-9.676595) on Cuss Strand, outwards towards the Greenane Islands, near Kenmare in Kerry, Ireland.
One place, infinite light experiences continually unfolding in front of me. I painted this series over January, February and March 2021. As we all struggle to see the way forward during this global pandemic I found myself more and more turning to the embrace of the soft, everchanging light. This one, small, insignificant, mesmeric place on the western edge of Europe being brought over to a small, yet significant, mesmeric place on the eastern edge of Asia.
Read the full press release →
“Greenane Islands, near Kenmare.
A place.
One place.
At the edge of the world.
An expanse of light, of air, of colour, of movement, of silence.
As I stand continuously on the promontory at the end of Cuss Strand.
Latitude 51.862758, longitude -9.676595.
I lean forward as I stand. compensating for the wind always blowing in my face.
The slow, breathless movement of the tide is an ebb and then a flow.
In and then out. Like a conductor coaxing the last, floating notes from the orchestra. Drifting.
Infinite weather experiences as I stand here.
Four seasons in an hour.
Sometimes four right in front as you stare from right to left and then left to right.
Read More →
Greenane Island, near Kenmare 1 • 80 x 60 cm
Greenane Island, near Kenmare 2 • 80 x 60 cm
Greenane Island, near Kenmare 3 • 80 x 60 cm
Greenane Island, near Kenmare 4 • 80 x 60 cm
Greenane Island, near Kenmare 5 • 80 x 60 cm
Greenane Island, near Kenmare 6 • 80 x 60 cm
Greenane Island, near Kenmare 7 • 80 x 60 cm
Greenane Island, near Kenmare 10 • 80 x 60 cm
Sandycove Store
& Yard
March 2021
Going from this land to the next • 203 x 122 cm
Even though we’re all waiting, there can be no standing still.
While waiting for my next exhibition, I agreed to do something I have never done before – to share just a snapshot, of just two of the many explorative and experimental journeys I have pursued over the last year.
Work that is experimental, exploratory, sometimes explosive. Created and developed in the pursuit of learning and discovery and new ways to express the ever changing light of Dublin bay.
My work is imperfect. My work is flawed. But so am I.
So while you’re waiting for your coffee at the Sandycove Store & Yard, don’t stand still but join me for a wander through my landscape, take it all in and, if it should take you, share your opinion.
Vinyl 1
Vinyl 2
Vinyl 3
Vinyl 4
Vinyl 4
Vinyl 6