Page 4 - LandEscape Interview

E scape

Land

Paul McCloskey

(Ireland)

An artist’s statement

Visual artist Paul McCloskey was born in Carrickmacross, Co.
Monaghan and is now living and working in Gorey Co. Wexford. Paul
attended the National College of Art and Design (N.C.A.D) Dublin from
1981 and graduated in 1986.
Paul also attended De Montfort University UK and was awarded a
Masters Degree in Fine art painting (MFA) in 2010. Paul is a
professional member of ‘visual artists Ireland’. He has exhibited
extensively both nationally and internationally throughout the UK,
London, Venice and New York and he has received many awards for his
work, which can be seen in numerous collections.

https://www.paulmccloskey.ie

The varied and stunning Irish landscape, coupled with our unsettled
weather and therefore often fleeting and mottled light, inspires me
greatly. Often a view will change or an area will be illuminated by a simple
break in the clouds, highlighting as if a shimmering treasure or jewel, a
corner of a field, the side of some rocky cliff or the dynamic sweeping
curves of a valley reminding us that we are an integral part of and
connected to a whole.

Effectively, this encourages us to see and, most importantly, feel its
beauty and spirit and therefore reconnect to this vital part of us, what
we perceive as everyday and perhaps ordinary, the places we merely
glance at without allowing ourselves to get lost in the breathtaking
creation and beauty that surrounds us.
The landscape for me is primarily a catalyst in expressing divinity and is
therefore secondary, the primary purpose being process, allowing and
presence. This suggestion of heaven and earth in constant struggle,
merging yet separable, solid yet amorphous all suggest the multidi-
mensional 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.

Paul McCloskey #196 Winter

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