This is an interview I gave to the Galway Advertiser in the run up to my exhibition at the Townhall Theatre in Galway in March this year.
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'I got stuck in Achill in a good way'
Artist Padraig McCaul discusses his Town Hall exhibition
BY CHARLIE MCBRIDE
On The Edge Of The Atlantic features 25 new paintings
inspired by the beauty of the landscape and coastline of Ireland's west
coast. McCaul presents the Irish landscape in a series of colour filled,
evocotive, images, where broad strokes are preferred to fine detail and
where simple, uncluttered, compositions allow room for the viewer to
get lost in the painting. This is his first solo exhibiton in Galway.
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| 'Under a Passing Cloud' | Oil on Canvas |
“I came quite late to painting,” Padraig, erstwhile member of The
Harvest Ministers tells me. “My interest was always in music, I studied
music in Maynooth as part of an arts degree and for the next 20 years
music was my main passion with the band. It’s only in the last 15 years
that I started delving into painting, it was almost a substitute for
when once the band stopped taking it very seriously, we weren’t playing
nearly as often as we had been, I took up the brush and began painting.”
McCaul was much enamoured by landscape painting from France; “I love
French painting, artists like Cezanne, I love the colours French artists
used,” he admits. “When I started painting I was looking for colourful
landscapes, that’s what I was drawn to for some reason and I was into
Italian and French paintings. When I started painting Irish landscapes I
began bringing in all the colours that I would expect to see in French
and Italian landscapes. Then you realise over time that the colours are
there anyway in the Irish landscape. For whatever reason a lot of Irish
artists seem reticent about putting those strong colours into their
paintings in the way you would see them in European paintings.”
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| 'Into the Sea' | Oil on Canvas |
Notwithstanding his love of French and Italian painting, Padraig also
sees himself within the tradition of the many great Irish artists who
have depicted Achill and the west: “I see myself very much as coming
from the tradition of Paul Henry and Roderic O’Conor.” he says. “There
are elements in my paintings where I can see a direct influence from the
likes of them, the colours, the strength. I don’t see vibrancy in a lot
of Irish landscapes, sometimes they are almost too true to life. I use
primary colours, blues and reds and crimsons, to elicit emotion. They
are not just there to describe the landscape, I’m using them to stir an
emotional response. “My paintings are based on the Irish landscape but what I am really
trying to get across is the feeling of it,” he continues. “I can paint a
mountain 10 times and every time will be different, that’s not what
matters, it’s how you convey the movement and the energy and the light
around it.
"You are creating more than just the image of a mountain, you’re
creating what it feels like to be standing in a field looking at it when
it is rainy or windy or warm, it is all those extra feelings that have
nothing to do with the visual, that is what the painting should be
about. You bring a viewer into a painting, the image is what draws them
initially but there is more, you can get to the root of different
feelings. The strong colours you see in continental paintings I use as a
way of stirring that emotive response, they are not just there because
the colours work well together.”
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| 'To the Sea' | Oil on Canvas |
Padraig expands on his connection to Achill: “I got stuck in Achill
in a good way. When I first started painting I thought this is great I
can travel and go anywhere, but when I came to Achill for the first time
it stopped me in my tracks. It has everything that a landscape artist
would want, there is the sea, the mountains, the rolling bog, and the
sky and the light that changes every hour of the day.
"There is no reason to go beyond it, there is so much here to inspire
painting. Because I live here now, I take the light and the atmosphere
and everything about it is replicated all the way down the west to west
Cork. If you can capture the atmosphere of Achill in a painting that
really captures the atmosphere of all of the west of Ireland.”
McCaul is represented by the Doorway Gallery in Dublin and his
paintings are in many international collections; “From the first time I
started exhibiting I seemed to get a really good reaction from people
who felt a connection to the paintings," he says. “I have been
painting full time for 10 years now and always had a very strong response to the work
and that subsequently translated into sales and galleries. I have been
working with the same gallery for the last 10 years in Dublin, also
another five or six regional galleries around the country. Thankfully
the response has been really strong throughout that time”.
How did he connect with Margaret Nolan for this Town Hall show? “I
first connected with Margaret via Facebook, it is great!” he replies
with a laugh. “I knew Margaret years ago when I was coming out of
college in Maynooth she was in NCAD. We hadn’t touched base in years and
then Facebook is a way of reconnecting with people and through that she
told me she was running shows in the Town Hall, she asked me last year
to contribute to exhibiting in windows for Cúirt, and those paintings
got a great response and she invited me to do a show in the Town Hall,
so it is a lovely way of getting my work seen in Galway, it is my first
time having a show there.”
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| 'On the Dingle Peninsula | Oil on Canvas |
"I’d put the sax and guitar away but I brought the sax out again to
play with the Mayo Concert Orchestra which was incredible for me to find
and that allows me to get back into playing music again, I’ve been
playing with them for the past two years and I play some local sessions
here in Achill.”
