Painter Sean Scully joined Contemporary Art curator Patricia Hickson for a conversation at the Wadsworth Athenum on Monday evening. Their discussion was centered on his “Landline” landscape series. Scully, born in Ireland, is a natural storyteller and his candor and anecdotes provided a lively and engaging entry way into his prolific body of work. He journeyed alongside the audience to Norfolk, England sharing a photograph he took in 1999 on a cliff looking out into and beyond the ocean. Scully remarked the scene “looked like a triptych.” (bands of sky, ocean, sand beach), the icons and devotional paintings in the Catholic church also shaped Scully’s artistic development. From that initial interplay and reflection with nature, twenty years of a deep exploration of color and form resonated onto the canvas. He has changed my perspective of landscape and the angle of my view, from the horizontal to the vertical.
http://thewadsworth.org
Scully also gave the audience a sneak peek of an upcoming installation at the Venice Bienalle in May 2019. Pictured above is a sketch of a layered Stack sculpture with plans to construct it in felt material. It will be installed in the altar under the dome at San Giorgio Maggiore church. Viewers will be able to walk into the space of stacked frames and look up into the “opulent ascension” of the dome, his structure a “telescope to the Heavens,” said Scully. I have plans to travel to Venice to experience the sacred story through Scully’s vision of abstraction. 🙂
I recorded a podcast focused on one of the paintings, “Landline: Blue See,” from the exhibition. Click