Paddy Lennon's landscapes place him in the very front rank of Irish painters. There is a still, sombre and mysterious quality in many of them, and, to use a term of David Brett's in relation to Paul Henry, an 'emptiness' devoid of human activity. But Lennon's are paintings that depict the Irish typography in a manner which is as far from Paul Henry's rural landscapes as may be imagined; yet the loneliness, the emptiness, that is one of the principal rhetorical features of Henry's paintings of the west of Ireland, is also, I feel, one of Lennons, whose own particular loneliness is a poetic comment on how water, bogland, rock and sky have inspired him.

His works are, by and large, serene and soothing; his brushstokes are masterful, his colours vibrant. His images, ofter merely hinted at, ask for metaphorical readings of his work. I find a constant tension in his landscapes between the various elements in whatever scene that has caught his eye and engaged his soul, be they the wetness of brown bogland, the harshness of the rocky fields with which man has wrestled for untold ages to conquer, or the merest glimpse of a still sea in the distance. His is a deep investigation into what it is in the landscape that invests it with the emotional resonance that attracted him to it. You must decode these processes for yourself, and figure out what it is that gave him the impulse to depict a particular scene as he has done.

He now paints in a studio, and his stimuli are sometimes colour photographs, sometimes memory, but above and beyond all else, intuition. That intuition never fails him; he creates, just as, for instance, Cezanne did in his studies of Provence, emotional resonances that attract you and remain with you.

Diarmuid O Muirithe

Solo Shows

-Upcoming -
2008 Tramyard Gallery, Dalkey, Dublin
2008 The Norman Gallery, Wexford
2008 Greenacres, Wexford

2007 Kill Rialaig Art Centre, Kerry
2007 Bridge Gallery, Dublin
2007 Oisin gallery, Dublin
2006 Cockleshell Arts Centre, Wexford
2006 Waterfront Gallery, Wales
2005 Kenny's Gallery, Galway
2003 Irish Representative Lorient Festival, France
2003 Bridge Gallery, Dublin
2003 Dyehouse Gallery, Waterford
2002 South Tipperary Arts Centre, Clonmel
2002 Triskle Arts Centre, Cork
2002 Dunamaise Arts Centre, Portlaoise
2002 Kenny's Gallery, Galway
2001 Old Market Arts Centre, Dungarvan, Co Waterford
2001 Bridge Gallery, Dublin
2000 Bourne Vincent Gallery, Limerick University
2000 Abstract Studios, Wexford
2000 Charleville Castle, Tullamore, Co Offaly
1999 Dyehouse Gallery, Waterford
1996 'Arte Espacio 1996', Galleria Espacio, Jerez, Spain
1995 Portico Gallery, Hong Kong
1994 Sala de Expositiones, Museo de Grabado, Marbella, Spain
1994 Hilton, Hong Kong
1993 Kowloon Club, Hong Kong
1993 Hong Kong Pacific Club, Hong Kong
1993 Pantheon Gallery, Dawson Street, Dublin
1993 The Geoghegan Gallery, Bridgemills, Galway
1992 The Geoghegan Gallery, Bridgemills, Galway


Works in Private & Corporate Collections

Paddy Lennon has work in many private, public and corporate collections world-wide including:

Office of Public Works, Ireland
The University of Limerick
Citibank Dublin
The Irish Centre, New York
The Druid Theatre, Galway
Trinity College Collection, Trinity College, Dublin
The Writers Museum, Dublin
Cathay Pacific
Curragh Club, Hong Kong
Museo de Grabado, Marbella
Gilbeys Head Office, Dublin
State University New York, New York
The Spanish Consulate, Dublin
OPW
AIB
Aidan O'Brien, Ballydoyle Stud
Christy Moore
Richard Harris
Dermot Cantillon


Awards

1979 Won the Rodney Burns Drawing Competition
1979 Won the Amberly Trust Drawing Competition
1980 Won the Rodney Burns Drawing Competition
1985 Medal of Honour in the Certamin de Dibujo de Antonio Rincon
1996 Medal of Honour in the Certamin de Pintura de Albacete
1998 Pollock-Krazner Foundation Award

Artist's statement

"When I paint, what interests me in the work is its underlying abstraction. This is what generates its quality, its life and its innate truth.

If the work can arouse sensations, thoughts, ideas and feelings, and stimulate the viewer then for me it is successful."

Paddy Lennon, March 2001

Reviews

"Some years ago the Office of Public Works compiled an inventory of the Wexford Landscape. By virtue of approaching a subject from a different angle, the landscape surrendered what had hitherto been beyond visual comprehension, revealing a decorous quilt with the most imaginative and seemingly perpetual fulachta fiadh sites, ringforts, ploughed out crop marks and moated sites. In essence, it was a repository of the human memory which until its exposure had been reclaimed and partly hidden by the duvet of history, the landscape. The inventory reminded us that a landscape, with the fingerprint of our ancient presence is, to paraphrase C.J. Jung, like the unconcious mind a storehouse of relics and memories. When I first saw Paddy Lennon's work I immediately drew a private comparison with his inventory although I couldn't figure why.

Eventually I realised that the canvas of the artist and the canvas of the landscape, what we might refer to sa the visual residual after the onslaught of change, were the consequence of two magnificent sculptors, time and imagination. When we allow our vision to bask in the diffraction of Lennon's colours, spawned by an imagination as acute as an aperture, we are ideally placed to fully grasp Cezanne's principle: when colour hs its greatest richness, then form has its plenitude. At a time when much of contemporary Irish art is invigorating because of ideas rather than pictures, it is refreshing to be able to bask in the dexrtrous variation of Lennon's oil landscapes; they are, like the inventory, the essence of the revelation. Modern art often stands accused of being inaccessible; but rather that looking for the right answers we might refrain from asking the wrong questions. It is, after all, the attentiveness of the light which unfurls the bud. Stand before paintings like "Below", "Inbher" or "Seascape" and marvel at Lennon's evocation of the interplay of tone and form, at how expeditious in the retinal sensation as both light and form duel for centre stage. There is a simmering suffusion in Paddy Lennon's work, a harmony of contrast, such as the calm prelude you experience in the path of an approaching storm."

Tom Mooney, The Wexford Echo, January 2002

"The Spanish sense of passionate and dramatic colours is still very much apparent in the now Wexford-based artist's work. Lennon isn't just concerned about the subject matter of his paintings but also of the paintings themselves. Working with oils he has a Turner-esque quality to his work. By turns giving the subject definition and impression. At times he gets so caught up in the painting "that I'm bombing away with a palette knife before I know it." The use of the palette knife is just one of his techniques at time there is a fluid use of oils that gives the appearance of watercolours or gouache. While he does use canvas he mainly likes to use fabriano a 100 per cent cotton Italian paper. "You can do almost anything with fabriano, draw, use oils, watercolour, gouache... The best thing about it is how it intensifies the colours." Lennon loves colour. He uses vibrant reds, oranges, and pinks with verve and panache, yet they never overpower the subject."

Michelle Viney, Galway Advertiser, January 2002

"Paddy Lennon's paintings are very much about sensation, atmosphere and the effects of light within the landscape. His take on these subjects, though, is far from explicit, as his abstractions leave just traces of the sky and aquatic settings which offered the original inspiration. The most forthright way in which Lennon reconstitutes landscape is through his use of an expressionistic or distorted palette, which also operates within the limits of monochrome. This adds a kind of surreal element to the paintings so that a veil of cirrus clouds or a burgeoning cumulous mass become suggestive of images from distant worlds. The occasionally prosaic cloud paintings can be contrasted against works which present a more definite structure, characterised by bold, linear demarcations. These offer a template on which Lennon's distinctive colours are underpinned. The suggestion is of rock pools or underwater settings as a painting such as Subsea (The Hook) which balances vivid turquoise, lilac and acerbic green against a dark background; it ptiches the shimmering pigments into sharp relief. Scale is a salient feature with a substantial contrast in dimensions ranging from four or five foot in the largest to a mere four or five inches. Contrary to expectations, the smaller works often command as much attention as the larger. Morning Tide is a case in point, as the wonderfully discrete imagery of land and sky are unified by a breathtaking naturalistic colouring that awakens memories of sultry summer evenings."

Mark Ewart, Irish Times, April 2002

Artist's Work