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Irish Arts Review Artist by the sea: the paintings of Mary Lohan Author(s): Catherine Marshall Source: Irish Arts Review (2002-), Vol. 29, No. 2 (SUMMER [JUNE - AUGUST 2012]), pp. 58-59 Published by: Irish Arts Review Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23278181 . Accessed: 10/06/2014 10:34 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Irish Arts Review is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Irish Arts Review (2002-). http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 185.44.78.13 on Tue, 10 Jun 2014 10:34:44 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Artist by the sea: the paintings of Mary Lohan

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Irish Arts Review

Artist by the sea: the paintings of Mary LohanAuthor(s): Catherine MarshallSource: Irish Arts Review (2002-), Vol. 29, No. 2 (SUMMER [JUNE - AUGUST 2012]), pp. 58-59Published by: Irish Arts ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23278181 .

Accessed: 10/06/2014 10:34

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Irish Arts Review is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Irish Arts Review(2002-).

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.13 on Tue, 10 Jun 2014 10:34:44 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

SUMMER 2012

EXHIBITION

Artist by

the paintings

the sea:

of Mary Lohan

mind Tony O'Malley's description of

himself; 'I am only the person who

wants to go down to the King's river

and make a drawing of the river there

....I am only this." Lohan has been

producing distinctive canvases and

prints of the Irish coastline, particu

larly the coasts of Donegal, Mayo and

Wexford for decades, working always

within a deliberately restricted the

matic and an equally restricted

methodology, yet somehow always

managing to avoid the formulaic,

constantly offering a taste of fresh

experience and a new confrontation

with the sublime.

It will come as no surprise then that

her new work for the Hamilton

Gallery in Sligo is also about the sea,

although on this occasion there is a

marked move in the direction of

greater figuration. Lest anyone con

fuse figuration with the human body,

think again. The figure in Lohan's

work is the Irish land/seascape, with

rather more of the land now, and less

of the sea, than heretofore, but in all

of her work the human presence, in

the person of the artist/viewer, is an

unspoken constant, and the

land/seascape is the sublime 'other'

against which the viewer must perpet

ually define him/herself. In presenting his greatest statement

of the sublime, Monk by the Sea

(1809) Caspar David Friedrich offered

a canvas with three, sweeping,

roughly horizontal bands; sky, sea and

sand. The unobservant might miss the

small figure of the monk, from whom

the painting gets its title, so insignifi

cant is he in relation to the forces of

nature. Robert Rosenblum famously

identified this painting as a landmark

along the road to abstraction, and

Within a deliberately restricted theme, Mary Lohan offers a new

confrontation with the sublime, writes Catherine Marshall ahead

of the artist's exhibition at the Hamilton Gallery, Sligo, in June

Mary

Lohan is a contempo

rary artist. She does not

easily fit the descriptions

'conceptual', or 'expressionist'; it is

difficult to describe her as Modernist,

not to mention a post-modernist. Yet

she certainly could not with any credi

bility be described as academic either,

and to cap it all, she paints the same

theme with only relatively small varia

tion over and over again and has done

so for twenty years now. Yet her work

is widely admired, even loved by art

audiences across the whole spectrum

of gallery-goers and collectors. Her

concentration on her painting calls to

58 IRISH ARTS REVIEW I SUMMER 2012

Artist by the sea:

the paintings of Mary Lohan

Catherine Marshall i

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2

BATHING ALL THE NATURAL ELEMENTS REPRESENTED IN A GLOW OF LIGHT THAT PULLS THEM TOGETHER RATHER THAN DEFINES THEIR DIFFERENCE, SHE PLAYS WITH CONVENTIONS OF COLOUR-FIELD ABSTRACTION

has, radically, drawn similarities

between it and the colour-field paint

ings of Mark Rothko.2 It is not as fan

ciful as it might seem to look at Mary

Lohan's paintings with Friedrich and

Rothko in mind. Although Lohan

does not insert a human presence to

represent us in the picture as Friedrich

1 MARY LOHAN b.1954 SEAFIELDSI 2012 oil on gesso panel A0x50cm

2 SEAFIELDSIV 2012 oil on canvas 30x30cm

3 SEAFIELDS V 2012 oil on canvas 30x30cm

did, her textured surfaces project

into our space and draw us, directly

and tangibly, into the picture. By

blurring the distinctions between the

different elements in her seascapes,

or bathing all the natural elements

represented in a glow of light that

pulls them together rather than

defines their difference, she plays

with conventions of colour-field

abstraction without ever subscribing

to it. She goes further with her

polyptychs, created by painting sepa

rate stretched canvases as one unit

and then pulling them apart so that

her impastoed paint reaches across

the void from one panel to another,

presenting a completely new spatial

dynamic that the viewer must engage

with, turning the paintings into

installations that interact with their

surroundings, making the painting

the ground for a drama that impli

cates both viewer and space. Writing

to Brian Kennedy about Rothko,

Sean Scully said, 'I'm very attracted

to his [Rothko's] relationship with

abstract art. Not the fluid style of his

abstraction, but its relationship with

the figurative. Even in his most res

olutely abstract work the memory of

the figure is embedded into the sur

face." In Mary Lohan's paintings, we

are embedded participants.

Her canvases are modestly scaled

but they still point to the sublime.

The horizon line can be low, so that

the viewer hovers above it, some

times it is so high that you are

sucked right into the muddy,

encrusted land itself, frequently it is

blurred so that you can't locate your

self within it. Lohan never subscribes

to the Irish tradition of mythologiz

ing the western coastline either, so

we can't fall back on that to find our

feet. Instead no matter which sce

nario we are presented with, we are

obliged to deal with the dislocation

on our own. There are no proxies

from folklore or history to help us,

only contemporary painting.■

All images ©The Artist. Photography Davey Moor.

Mary Lohan 'New Paintings' Hamilton Gallery, Sligo 7-30 June 2012.

Catherine Marshall is co-editor of Volume V, five-volume Art and Architecture of Ireland, Royal Irish Academy, forthcoming.

1 B. Lynch (Ed) Tony O'Malley, 1996 pM. 2 R. Rosenblum, Modern Painting and the

Northern Romantic Tradition-, Friedrich to

Rothko, London, 1975, pp .10-11. 3 B. Kennedy, Sean Scully, Body of Light, 2006,

P 72.

SUMMER 2012 I IRISH ARTS REVIEW 59

1 MARY LOHAN b.1954 SEAFIELDSI2012 oil on gesso panel 40x50cm

2 5EAFIELDSIV 2012 oil on canvas 30x30cm

3 SEAFIELDS V 2012 oil on canvas 30x30cm

1 B. Lynch (Ed) Tony O'Malley, 1996 pM. 2 R. Rosenblum, Modern Painting and the

Northern Romantic Tradition-, Friedrich to

Rothko, London, 1975, pp .10-11. 3 B. Kennedy, Sean Scully, Body of Light, 2006,

P 72.

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