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 Halo; 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 Halo 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.

Peter Murray
Director, Crawford Municipal Art Gallery, Cork Ireland