JULIAN MEAGHER

In Breaking Sky Double Rainbow, Meagher distils fleeting atmospheric moments and vast natural cycles through the stillness of paint. To enter his canvases is to be absorbed into an intense and fragile timelessness. In this new body of work, landscapes filled with the sweeps and distortions of dawn sit alongside abstracted columns of light that pulsate. Together, they suggest that momentary effects of light are actually ever-present around us, hidden in the atmosphere and waiting to be perceived.

Meagher approaches his landscapes with patience and restraint, building up infinitesimal gradations through hours of layering pigments. Each painting has been touched the same number of times in rhythmic succession and is comprised of only ten colours, gently blended into a balancing act of cool and warm hues. Here, the physical demands of the process are belied by the tranquil of its record. We see only the quiet yet charged calm, as if held in the eye of a storm.

In his Night Palace and Rainbow series, the artist invites us to see twilight from an elusive vantage, depicting the sun’s rays without a vanishing point (travelling in parallel as they do beyond our small seat of observation). In doing so, he deftly marks the cosmic passage of time through transitions of night to day, from sleep to wakefulness.

Throughout Breaking Sky Double Rainbow, natural cycles become entwined with human emotion. There is a feeling that the tangle of our hopes, despairs and dreams can fall into rhythm with the paintings’ bands of light. With a surgeon’s precision and a poet’s intuition, Meagher opens up a space beyond the horizon, where light and feeling are both seen anew.