Works °15 — CHARLES TYRRELL

interview by Brian Fallon

ISBN 978 0946641 413      32 pages (paperback)    20x15cm    18 illus

Charlie Tyrrell’s early paintings were influenced by the work of American Abstract Expressionists, but these gave way to works concerned with geometric relationships between rectangular forms and borders, and explorations into the qualities of paint and the possibilities of the medium. While remaining definantly abstract, this book explores the artist’s progression from his early days to the more developed and highly precise style he still practices today.

EXTRACT

"At the core of my work there is a constant battle or state of flux between the order of the imposed geometrical structure and the demands of an emerging painting that might not wish to conform to this structure. The geometric structure is usually a constant, with the same basic divisions running through a series of paintings. The starting point is a geometric configuration within which I know a painting will be allowed to develop. There can, of course, be a great deal of fluidity within the structure, and, as the picture develops, alignments between the different sections can shift and change. Orders might break down altogether, so that the final painting may bear little relation to its earlier manifestations.
          This chopping and changing that takes place is at the very heart of the developing painting, and I find it is the part which excites me most. When a painting gains a momentum of its own, and my idea of where it should be going is vetoed by the charged and mysterious thrust of the painting itself... This unpredictable and indefinable aspect is the real magic of painting, for me. August Blue [1992], I feel, is a painting which straddles two worlds: the Borderland idea of the window through to the elemental, combined with a more formal, up-front type of painting with a sense of a classical order. March 1992 also combines these two extremes, the strong, calm, structural stance with a turbulence breaking through. Your journey as a painter may be more important than what you arrive at. You do not necessarily arrive at what you aimed at, and things can come in which surprise you. To carry a painting along is a balance of allowing it to flow and asserting your control over it."

— Charlie Tyrrell in conversation