Lot 65: m - Sean Shanahan , b.1960 Orient oil on board

signed, titled and dated April - May 04 2000 on the reverse oil on board

80 by 30cm.; 31½ by 35½in.

Kerlin Gallery, Dublin

In leaving the raw surface of the board visible on only three sides of the present work, Shanahan creates what Mel Gooding has termed a 'discreet dynamic of imbalance' (Gooding, quote in Vidar, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, exh.cat., 2002, p.9). Whilst the three stripes delineate the rich colour, the absence of a fourth border along the right edge, the eastern or Orient edge, crucially releases the dense tones of the composition so that they interact directly with the surrounding space (see also lot 79). According to Gooding, the key to understanding the artist's inspiration for the configuration, lies in the nature of his studio in Sartirana at the time where the only natural light to hit his working wall fell from left to the right; 'as if that open edge at the right of the paintings was a sign, an implication, of the inevitable dying away of the contained colour as the intensity of light naturally decreases on its passage from its source towards infinity and darkness' (Gooding, ibid., p.9).