Painter Leonard Sexton explains why his work, including the new exhibition Broken Halos, is always large scale.

A PROMINENT ART COLLECTOR had bought a couple of pieces from me, through Blue Leaf Gallery, over the last number of years. The girls in the gallery told him that I’d been working on a project and said that I had suggested that I would like it to be seen as a body of work, and perhaps travel. He came out and viewed the paintings one weekend in the workshop as they were still in the process.

I was interested in keeping it as one body of work, simply because as you get older as an artist you like the idea of your message getting out. In group shows and in other situations, you feel you’re getting lost in a group or everyone has a different philosophy — or not.

They’re big canvases, roughly eight feet by eight feet. I think my patron said to me at the time, “Why were they so big, it’s hard to find anywhere to hang them?” and I said, “They’re not really that big.” Maybe I’m painting bigger to stop people having them.

I was always a big painter. When I was younger, I painted very large, but had to stop it for several years because it was even more impossible, when you were younger, to store it and to do anything with it.

Broken Halos started off from a number of standpoints. I was looking at something that was easy to work on — a lot of contemporary artists tend to study a lot of books for something to comment on, or some concept that they may or may not be that familiar with, running off to South America, and painting the problems there.

I’ve always found it easier to deal with what I know well, so I’m taking, loosely, Leonardo’s paintings of the Madonna and Child, and all his variations — so the mother and child and the family unit, or lack of it, has always been iconic.

This is the first big body of work that I’ve done. I’ve been painting for 25 years, and this is the first time I’ve actually decided to home in on a smaller theme. I guess it just took me a long time to get around to doing that. I think that from now on, that’s what I’ll be doing.

Broken Halos continues until August 1st at the OPW Atrium, 55 St Stephen’s Green.