Works °14 — TONY O’MALLEY

interview by John O’Regan

ISBN 978 0946641 406    32 pages (paperback)     20x15cm     20 illus

Tony O’Malley was undoubtedly one of Ireland’s best-loved painters. A self-taught artist, painting was always an essential element of his life... his essence, in fact. The book moves through the various developments in his work, from the early, rather sombre paintings of St Ives, to his brighter pieces, painted on his return to live in Ireland, and his extremely colourful and vibrant Bahamas works.

EXTRACTS

"It’s strange the transition from Cornwall back home. Something happens in life that brings you around the full circle. It’s like painting – there’s no such thing as new painting, nothing is new in painting. Everything is coming back again – the full circle. There’s a strain that’s always cyclic. I like working here; I regard it as being away from art. In St Ives you were in the middle of everything that was going on. I’m finding a new sense of myself back here. I’m reminded that I’m going to be eighty in September and I’m full of the same surprise that I had when I was a young fella. I don’t think about being eighty. I’ve no plans, just take every day as it comes. I don’t make a prescription for the day; sometimes I work well and sometimes not so well. My working day is usually attending to a painting that needs something. It may need a bluish-green, not a pure blue – but that’s not thinking colour, it’s doing colour. Colour comes to you. I do believe in reflection and stillness. I believe sometimes that beginning a painting is like beginning a journey and you arrive at the point of reflection. You may end that day or go down tomorrow and resume the journey."

— Tony O’Malley in conversation