Athlone artist Lawrence O’Neill has just opened his new exhibition of paintings in the Bastion Gallery and will run until August 31, Tuesday to Saturday from 11am-6pm.
According to Mr O’Neill the exhibition explores the most distant observable edge of the landscape - the horizon. Usually in the Midlands it is seen as a distant flat line which recedes as we move towards it .
“Our horizon always shuns our approach and remains obstinately aloof,” said Mr O’Neill.
In these paintings the distant horizon line is expanded to form a horizontal band stretching across the width of each work. It is a region rich in abstract painterly detail, sometimes suggesting the serene of pastoral, but more often evoking the destructive effects of natural phenomena or of the uses and abuses which leave our landscape brutally damaged.
“The title of the exhibition is borrowed from a strophysics, and refers to the distortion of light which occurs as one approaches the point of no return on the edge of the Black Hole. All matter would, in effect, be drawn into the ‘abstract’.”
“This artist observing the distant edge of the horizon, uses the language of abstraction to break through the conventional boundaries of the traditional landscape,” he added.
