The Adage of never judging a book by its cover also applies to judging paintings by a jpeg. I had only ever seen Leonard Sexton’s artwork online and, to be honest, wasn’t hugely excited about viewing his nudes, despite such lofty credentials (he studied under one of Ireland’s leading contemporary Artists, Patrick Graham). But on entering the OPW’s gaping exhibition space, I was pleasantly surprised; where I first expected to find lurid, derivative displays of abstract expressionism there were instead monumental, luminous and quite extraordinary canvases.

Sexton’s latest works are presented by the Blue Leaf Gallery and play with traditional notions of ‘mother and child’ by toppling all divine associations – hence the title, Broken Halo. Motherhood is expressed here unsentimentally – changing nappies in Broken Halos II and III, coaxing a walk in Broken Halos XI – but it’s the way that Sexton renders his figures that makes them special.

He captures movement in a similar way to a blurred figure in a photograph; that of his subjects are like vapours, leaving visual residues of their physical actions. Furthermore, these multi-freeze-framed scenes also echo Sexton’s own physical process of layering paint over a period of time. Paint is applied thick in places and is entirely absent in others. Reds, yellows and cobalts dominate the palette while the use of linseed oil creates pleasing transparencies against opaque slivers of impasto. In other areas, pigments dribble and congeal.

The paintings appear to be in chronological order starting with the vibrant Broken Halos I in which a newborn baby appears to be cradled over a mother’s splayed thighs and ending with Broken Halos XV, a muddy-coloured chaos of taller, standing figures rendered in short, zig-zagging brushstrokes. Indeed, the brilliant hues and longer planes that define the first half of the exhibition are replaced with more subdued browns and creams – Broken Halos X (pictured) signalling the shift, featuring the mother with a hands-on-hips poe and vexed, mask-like face.

Lucy White