Page 3 - Art Talk Collective

Installation view of The Omega 3D. 2018. Courtesy of the artist.

AT: Your newest work, the Omega Series, combines your abstract painting style with that of 3D
rotating cubes, allowing the viewer to experience the paintings from an entirely different perception.
What inspired this shift towards 3D?

PM: The Omega 3D is the third and final instalment of the Awakening series, here I decided to work
in three dimensions as a way of representing the Divine or spiritual aspect of my work, suggesting
that the spiritual is all things, in all directions at once. I worked on the cubes to challenge myself to
resolve pictorial complications not just on a 2D surface but to think in 3D as I worked and also to hold
the spectator’s interest hopefully enticing them into my visual world. The suggestion of heaven and
earth in constant struggle, merging yet separable, solid yet amorphous all suggest the
multidimensional nature of the spiritual, the beginning and the end, the alpha and omega, the
struggle within, between the conditioned self and the divine/spiritual self.

AT: What other artists have inspired your work or artistic education?
PM: I admire many artists, but the Irish painter Jack Yeats was certainly one of my earliest
inspirations. I like expressive works that convey an atmosphere or mood. However, Mark Rothko’s
chapel series of paintings convey a quiet spirituality and are very powerful in their simplicity.

AT: Going forward, what are some of your goals for your art? Anything you would be interested in
experimenting with?

PM: I’m currently working on a new series again based on landscape, where my pallet is considerably
brighter and fresher, I’m constantly looking to convey that seemingly ever elusive magic and wonder
of nature, to show that we are all one and of the same, connected to the world around us. The
process of creating is a spiritual act for me, to paint with truth, one must first be truly present.
Everything happens in the present moment; painting reinforces this truth for me.