Vangard °1 – MARTIN FINNIN

essay by Alannah Hopkin; intro by Peter Murray

ISBN 978 0948037 474     48 pages (paperback)    22x17cm    27 illus 

This book documents Martin Finnin's 2007 exhibition at the Vangard Gallery, Cork. Finnin is an abastract painter whose use of colour dominates his work. His paintings celebrate life through paint, ideas and emotions in a most optimistic way.

EXTRACT

"The result of a recent visit by the artist to Ghana, these new paintings by Martin Finnin are as full of vigour, poetic feeling and confidence as his earlier work. Motifs from his previous paintings reappear in the form of simplified heads, trees and archetypal landscapes. Echoing the achievements of Cobra painters such as Pierre Alechinsky, Karel Appel and Askar Jorn, Finnin’s art is a celebration of colour and the expressive qualities of paint. There is no close dividing line between the material world and the spiritual world in these works, and Finnin cites the inspiration of Tony O’Malley’s landscapes, paintings that are as much an exploration of the artist’s own emotional world as they are of external reality. These recent paintings are true abstractions, in that while based on elements of the material world, they float above concerns such as representation of landscape or figure. Colour, and its ability to convey or reflect feeling, is the most important element in these works, and Finnin has the rare ability to use colour in an instinctive and joyous way, as a celebration of life. He brings an optimistic note to contemporary Irish painting."

— introduction by Peter Murray