By Rose Rushe
Corbally artist Maurice Quillinan’s new show, Music on the Water, launched in Dooradoyle’s County Hall the night of May 18, with Mayor Kevin Sheahan doing the honours. In fact the exhibition is in two parts, with a parallel running simultaneously at City Hall in Merchant’s Quay.
According to the artist, ‘Music on the Water’ is the final part of a collaboration between Nicholas Ross, a pianist from Clare based in Columbus, Ohio; Kent Holiday, American composer, based in Virginia and of course, Quillinan. He’s a man who has travelled, worked and exhibited abroad extensively, Asia in particular, but who is Limerick based*. Music on the Water works are all oil on linen.
Photo: Liam Burke/Press 22
Photo: Liam Burke/Press 22
Photo: Liam Burke/Press 22
Photo: Liam Burke/Press 22
Photo: Liam Burke/Press 22
Oil on linen
Artist’s note:
The project is an exploration of the ‘Golden Section’, which is a mathematical subdivision of a surface area or musical score, suggesting where the most important elements should be positioned. The music incorporates a sonata for piano by Holiday ‘Tzolk’in’ and the piano etudes of Claude Debussy, all performed by Nicholas Ross.
Paintings incorporate the structure of the music, placing the golden notes / moments as Lilly pads. The images endeavor to combine the physical and emotional response that is inherent in our experience of the music and a pond in a given moment in time. The canvases are constantly worked over many years, slightly altering the colour, tonal and textural values of each, to greater enhance the emotional experience of the music and the watery environment.
The works are designed as meditative, emotional responses to the music and the water. Like magnetic tape the works try to draw in the physicality, the smells, sounds, colours, tastes of an observed environment. In this case the Shannon river is the subject for this exhibition, reflecting the constant changes physical and emotional which water and music has on us human beings.
An ever changing sky constantly mirrored in the river is a reminder that the paintings and the music only briefly capture a brief moment in natures constantly evolving drama.
Maurice Quillinan was born in Limerick, and graduated from Limerick College of Art and Design, the Royal College of Art, London, les Ecole Nationale Superieur des Beaux Arts, Paris and the University of Limerick. He has represented Ireland, exhibiting in, France, Germany, Britain, Ireland, Russia, America, Canada, Malta, Switzerland, Australia, China and Hong Kong. His work is held in public and private collections in thirty-four countries.
