Profile °1 – PAULINE FLYNN

essays by Paul M O’Reilly, Gus Gibney

ISBN 978 0946641 727      48 pages (paperback)     22.5x22.5cm     22 illus

This publication marks a particular point in the artist’s career – that is, the culmination of an extensive period of quest and exploration. The outcome is a vibrantly colourful body of work, characterised by abstract, yet uncomplicated forms and executions. However, Flynn’s undeniably expert use of colour subtly defies the simplicity of such forms, and entices the audience to engage in the works in a highly personal and meaningful way. This assuredness marks Pauline Flynn’s maturity in relation to her subject and her medium. The journey the audience is invited upon is as compelling as it is non-directive.

EXTRACTS

"Thanking, the giving and saying of thank-you, requires a special way of thinking and feeling. A painting, or any work of art, can, in this special way, give and say thanks. Not many do; not many artists centre their art on a sense of thankfulness expressed either by what their art refers to, or by what or how it is made, or even by or for whom it is made. Maybe more artists would want to say thanks in their work if they only knew how. Pauline Flynn knows how. Her recent paintings have this special awareness; they centre themselves in a spirit of thankfulness. She has journeyed far and wide over the last ten years: the far-east, middle-east, the near-west and further west, with performance-based art early on as a part of the quest. She put where she went and what and who she found there to the question through work that has increasingly turned to painting. Perhaps it was while raking leaves in Morocco that she became enlightened, because these recent paintings are full of a spirit of thankfulness expressed in the shining light of colours."

— from the essay by Paul O’Reilly

"There is an allusion to regularity here. Any dream of an ease in naming the allusive, like using the name ‘stripe’, is dispelled by the context. These appearances of regularity occur as objects which are either in windows or seemingly free-floating. The windowing gives notice that these objects are not literally themselves; they occurred before, and the previousness inherent in their current occurrence is underlined by the similar windowed appearance of some of those previous occurrences. Resistance to the temptation to shelter in the name ‘summary’ will be rewarded. The paneling that has been in the work from the beginning is here not only taken from the frame into the body, this being the previous work going from panel or framing window to internal window, but is also now worked in an abstract of itself."

— from the essay by Gus Gibney