Michael Kieran was born in Dublin, but he has had a long relationship with the West of Ireland landscape, beginning with childhood holidays spent on Achill Island from the late 1950s. Since that time he has drawn his artistic inspiration >from that singular geography, particularly the bog landscape, and it is an environment that remains very important to him artistically in terms of space and place. Over the years his painting has evolved from the purely representational, taking on a linear quality that relates to distance and the horizon, dealing with colour and spatial concerns.
This latest exhibition is a more recent departure for Michael. The elimination of the original reference material and removal of recognisable elements from his paintings evokes an internal landscape that offers a more personal narrative, creating new emotional dynamics between viewer and painting. These are rich, powerful, meditative works that make use of vibrant, intense colours, paintings that find inspiration in the American Abstract Expressionist painters, particularly Mark Rothko, while still remaining firmly located in an Irish idiom.
Light and atmosphere are central to Kieran's work. He reflects the intense luminous qualities of the landscape, and also its transitory, ephemeral nature - the second-to-second changes that are part of the West of Ireland's particular character. However, Kieran's work goes further than pure depiction. It represents an exegesis of a much more personal viewpoint, a crystallisation of an artistic vision that is both evocative and resonant. This is an impressive body of work that announces Kieran as a significant artistic presence, and one to watch.
- Ian Wieczorek
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