David Eager Maher

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pinked

/pInkt/

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adjective

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• (of cloth) cut with a scalloped or zigzag edge.

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• "a bonnet with pinked edging".

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18 Nov 2021 - 28 Jan 2022

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Oliver Sears Gallery is pleased to announce the launch of ‘Pinked’, a new exhibition of painting by Wicklow born artist, David Eager Maher

The title of the exhibition refers to the description of cutting, edges and patterns of cloth, techniques the artist has deployed in the construction of his tableaux. The influence of Matisse in both the design and technique of Eager Maher’s compositions is deliberate, indeed a work entitled Hotel Regina takes its name from the hotel particular in Nice where Matisse lived, creating many of his most iconic pieces. Eager Maher’s use of collage, colour and the distortion of perspective also recall techniques used by Matisse. The small series of paintings in the exhibition emerged after a two-year process. The starting point was the genre of Still Life, developing into a stylized landscape into which the objects are placed, freighted with art historical currency from antiquity onwards. During this making process, techniques and individual works were merged, separated and occasionally abandoned. The artist says of his motivation in making these works, ‘The pictorial aspects of the paintings are spatial quandaries and my thinking while painting is to try to dissolve perspective and tweak the conventional rules of composition, while also introducing a kind of deliberate wonkiness.’

Colour is a key ingredient here, also. To that end, ‘Pinked’ has another meaning. Eager Maher has a neutral feel for the colour pink and that very diffidence spurred him on to investigate its use.  Bright pink, therefore, comprises the surface ground of these paintings, predominantly. Cold blues and purples seem to land naturally for him on top of the pink. At the same time, as an exercise, he decided to try to avoid green as much as possible. Matisse from the Fauvist period comes to mind, again.

‘Pinked’ also describes another notable feature of these works: the frames, hand-painted by the artist. More than our hero, Henri Matisse spilling over the edges, the repetition of a decorative motif that emerges from the formal end of the composition transforms each work from a complex, two dimensional painterly narrative into a fully wrought object.

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To book a visit please contact the gallery.​

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