Leinster Gallery


Opening Hours: Mon–Fri: 10am–5pm, Sat: 10.30am–1.30pm

- Current & Forthcoming
- Past Exhibitions

Places, Natalia Black & Alan Graham
19th November - 1st December 2009

Natalia Black and Alan Graham share one thing in common; their works are inspired by nature. Although close to his perception of landscape, Alan’s paintings are not representational. He believes, with confidence, that the landscape from which he has first hand experience can be translated into visual images as signs of his feelings for nature. This refreshing idealism forms the basis of and the motivation for his preoccupation with the act of painting.

This sense of idealism is not shared by Natalia; under the veil of abstracted imagery, her feelings for what she perceives remain guarded and concealed. Her subjective view of the surrounding world is out of sight. The substance of her paintings is dense and her imagery obstinate and unsettled; as such her paintings are open to various interpretations. As some of her titles suggest the works could be inspired by a site, a location, an occasion, a time/space which potentially would be familiar to us all, but she has no desire to send us back there; we are left alone with the inner workings of our own perceptions, feelings and thinking about the works.

Unlike Natalia, Alan wants us to see what he has seen, wants us to feel what he has felt and his greatest achievement would be to make us aware of the sites where his paintings have come from. The idealism of Alan’s paintings desires and cries out for a unified perception among all of us; he acts as a painter/ messenger trying to reveal to us the secrets and the marvels of his own experiences, not unlike some political artists, he believes in the transparency of visual language and through that the openness of the world to mutual understanding.

If there is anything to be represented in Natalia’s paintings it is precisely the unrepresentable nature of the world; her works circle around and avoid many direct encounters, pass over and beyond many perceptual hurdles and search for an identity which can never be found.
Confronting a mirror, Natalia’s works constantly see themselves in the process of becoming transfigured; while Alan’s paintings seem to know themselves well and see themselves intact on the other side.