The Kerlin Gallery is currently presenting an exhibition of rarely seen early works by renowned painter Stephen McKenna - enjoy a gallery of featured works above.
Painted in the 1960s, when the artist was in his 20s and living in London, the works in this exhibition result from a decade of remarkable creative freedom.
This formative period of McKenna's career is defined by a quest for expanded consciousness and his belief in the power of the imagination.
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Listen: RTÉ Arena on Stephen McKenna's the sixties
Assembling fragments of shape and colour, McKenna's early abstract paintings adopt a vivid multi-chromatic palette and a dreamlike elasticity. As the decade progresses, the artist begins to introduce the human figure to these scenarios, using spatial illusion to bend linear time and elicit intense psychological drama. Moving from abstraction to figuration with ease, he layers windows within windows, rooms within rooms, suspending the figure in abstract geometric prisms, or splicing it into composite parts.
Seldom seen since they were first exhibited, the paintings in the sixties have a vitality and sense of discovery that reverberates across half a century – and are as captivating now as they were upon completion.
Stephen McKenna - the sixties is at The Kerlin Gallery, Dublin, until January 14th 2023 - find out more here.
