Irish Arts Review

Still-Life in ActionAuthor(s): Brian LynchSource: Irish Arts Review (2002-), Vol. 23, No. 4 (Winter, 2006), pp. 72-73Published by: Irish Arts ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25503475 .

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1 Jane O'M alley

Still-Life - towards

Montanas del Fuego 1 (Lanzarote) 2006

gouache, acrylic and

collage 50.8 x

68.58cm

2 Jane O'Malley Photo: Dylan

Vaughan

SS

I Still-Life in Action The initial exuberance of Jane O'Malley's paintings belie their carefully considered

construction, writes BRIAN LYNCH

The word that occurred to me when I first looked at

the pictures in Jane O'Malley's new exhibition in

the Taylor Galleries was movement. This may seem

odd considering the stillness that pervades the

work, but the opposites, I think, illuminate each other (Fig 1). The depiction of movement in painting is too broad a theme

to be considered here, except to say that in early European

painting - in sculpture it is otherwise

- the vocabulary of motion

was generally limited and highly stylised. By contrast, we are so

used nowadays to a complex visual language of static things

moving that it is hard to remember that neither the eye nor the

world works like a camera. In relation to Jane O'Malley's work,

however, there is a point to be made that is at once particular to

her and historically based (Fig 2). Before Impressionism, still-life painting was just that: still.

Even if the theme was mutability, 'change and decay in all around

I see', what was painted was halted, as it were arrested on the

spot. After Monet (whose paintings of pond-life have, not inci

dentally, influenced Jane O'Malley) and certainly after van Gogh, still-life painting became active: what was inanimate was animat

ed; the subject and the handling were vitalised and personalised to represent the vitality and personality of the artist.

Much of what Jane O'Malley does can be defined as belong

ing to the genre, and a great deal of her other main subject,

72 I

IRISH ARTS REVIEW WINTER 2006

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STILL-LIFE IN ACTION

EXHIBITION

landscape, is framed in such a way -

very often seen from an

interior - that it, too, can be called still-life. Her vitality can be

defined in two ways: how the paint itself is articulated, and how

the objects she paints relate to each other rhythmically (Fig 4). It is useful to bear in mind the distinction, or more precise

ly the lack of distinction, she draws between these objects and

their surroundings. In the arena of 20th-century still-life painting

(taking the varieties of realism and photo-realism as subsidiary),

the materiality, the feel, of objects tended to merge with and give

way to what one might call the 'overall-ness' of the idea. The

plainest and most mysterious example of this tendency was

Morandi -

he sometimes went so far as to paint his bottles 'in real

life' before painting them as pictures. Closer to home, Charles

Brady is another example: he did not paint, say, a brick of straw

berry ice-cream in order to make one's mouth water (though the

result is toothsome), but for the sake of a more lasting sensuality.

Jane O'Malley's approach is somewhat different. On the one

hand her subject-objects are always clearly demarcated by line

and sometimes by near-primary colour in contrast to the gener

ally muted tonality. On the other hand, in spite of these clarities,

the character of what is depicted is shared across the picture

plane and becomes in that sense immaterial: things are highly

specific but lowly differentiated, and this is because the work is

unified by the non-referential qualities of paint. This can be

seen, for example, in Still Life -

Arrieta, a painting set in

Lanzarote, where the tonal range is narrow and the objects and

background are essentially the same (Fig 3). Elsewhere, in Gozo

for example, a painting of a cat in an interior with a landscape

seen through a window, while the compositional range is wide,

as are the oppositions of colour, the overall decorative flatness is

the same: fundamentally abstract.

Without underestimating the appeal of these paintings as

representations of existing things -

and anyone who has visited

the O'Malley house and garden in Physicianstown instantly

recognises them as such -

their truth as art requires to be eval

uated as abstractions from nature. Stylistically, they are close to

the work of the little-known but wonderful American painter Morris Graves (1910-2001). Formally, they lie somewhere

between Monet and Morandi, between strict fluidity and

instinctual geometry.

This brings one back to movement. Very often, appreciating

a Jane O'Malley painting involves an understanding of the swing of the paint. It is necessary to make a distinction here between

activity and gesture: however care-free and exuberant this art is,

none of its effects is careless, loose or splashy. It is too direct for

disorder, too straightforward for accident. As in the work of Ben

Nicholson, whose approach has influenced her, everything Jane

O'Malley does is closely considered: the line, for instance, is

often scored into the surface, then built up in repeated glazes to

produce a continuous bead.

At the risk of over-simplifying, one can often discern a rough

ly circular movement in the paint and the motifs -

and therefore

in the ideas. This centripetal or vortex-like energy can also be

observed in the bending but spikey line. It is the turn of the

painter's hand, her signature. Psychologically, too, the instinct to

focus in on things and thereby make them secure is significant.

In Spring Window - Physicianstown, for example, curtains (which

are actually collaged muslin) blow open to reveal white flowers

in a jug -

they burst out of it and yet the dotted rhythm of the

spray is meticulously arranged.

Arrangement, unshowy but dramatic, decides the dynamism

of these paintings. It is their fixative. The precise location of

forms in their proper places tenses and unifies the space between

them. Contemplation of the result leads to an understanding

that what moves and what is fixed can amount to the same

thing. Movement, arrangement, rhythm, harmony -

these are

musical terms. At their composed best, Jane O'Malley's paint

ings, although they are still, dance to the music of time.

BRIAN LYNCH is a writer and a member of Aosd?na.

All images ? The Artist. Photography Ignatious O'Neill.

Recent work by Jane O'Malley 23 November - 9 December Taylor Galleries, Dublin.

3 Still-Life - Arrieta

2006 oil on board

60.96 x 91.44cm

4 New Year's Day

Painting - Red

Stems 2006 oil on

board 60.96 x

45.72cm

^^^^^I^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^l 73

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