Archipelago

Recent paintings by Michael Mc Swiney

29th April until the 11th June 2023

Michael McSwiney  is one of the most important exponents, in Ireland, of the post-expressionist sublime. Through his mature, layered language of pours, drips, accretions, sprays and glazes, McSwiney generates brooding, colour-rich panoramas that are at once desolate, haunting and beautiful. Largely non-referential, McSwiney’s aesthetic belongs to the tradition of the ‘sublime vista’, which has its roots in the work of Caspar David Friedrich and its 20th/21st-century manifestations, most notably, in the work of Mark Rothko and Anselm Kiefer.

Michael Mc Swiney (b. Cork 1969) began his studies at the Crawford College of Art and Design. He graduated with an Honours Degree in Fine Art from the National College of Art and Design in 1991. For several years Michael travelled and worked in many countries such as Norway, India and Egypt. In the late nineties he returned to live in Ireland where he had several solo exhibitions and exhibited his work at An t`Oireachtas and Iontas, where he won the painting prize in 2000.

In 2000 Michael moved to Oslo, Norway where he regularly exhibited his paintings and lectured at the prestigious Einar Granum Art School.

Michael returned to live in Ireland in 2008. He now lives in Clonakilty, West Cork.

He has been awarded grants from the Arts Council of Norway, Cork County Council and the Norwegian Culture Department. His paintings are represented in both public and private collections in Australia, Norway, Denmark, Holland and Ireland.

Michael portrays a world of panoramas of land and sea. The relationship between the sea, its effect on its immediate surroundings and the abstract process of experiencing such “affects” has established an internal dialogue which Michael has been developing since his childhood growing up in Cork harbour. Memory forms a base whereupon the intense process of layering and peeling back materials such as tar, pigment and earth allow Michael to explore the atmosphere of such memories. Often taking months to complete, the works are the product of much distillation.