RICHARD HEARNS

‘The Irish have always had an outward looking perspective and a unique identity in the world. Likewise, throughout history, the Lebanese people have covered great expanses in order to explore, learn, trade and grow.’ Richard Hearns

This series of paintings invites you to experience a unique cultural ‘Enclave’, a territory marked out not by traditional lines, borders and language but by something beyond these bounds—colour. In his monograph describing Enclave, independent scholar and art advisor Raphy Sarkissian describes Hearns’ ‘superbly calculated visual grammar’ as being founded upon ‘innumerable instances of modernist painting, as much as that grammar relies upon the process of painting as a decisive act of experimentation.’

Hearns paints in the wild landscape of The Burren national park in County Clare, Ireland, an ancient natural landscape which emphasises these traditions of exploration, discovery and expression through the medium of paint. Each painting in the series was made as an extension of the physical surroundings–earth, sea and sky–and materialises Hearns’ reminiscences of colours and natural phenomena.

This will be the artist’s second solo show at Cadogan in London. The paintings, many of which are life-size–literally the same height as the artist and spanning the width of his outstretched arms–are intensely physical acts, drawing inspiration from the discipline of martial arts, of which Hearns is a practitioner, and the rhythmic nature the rural idyll where he lives and works. Enclave will open to the public at Cadogan Contemporary London on the 8^th of June and will run until 26^th.