John Sheehan
Visions Fantastic
John Sheehan’s new series of paintings in Vision Fantastic are projections of an inner world inhabited by forms drawn from the subconscious mind. The thrill of inventing new imagery is the impetus that drives this artist to continually search for new visual expressions.
In this series of new works the tree is the central motif the artist places upon the stage of the landscape. In these compositions Sheehan creates neither figure nor ground relies on 'realism' to support its relationship. Trees glow, clouds turn to stone and light flows like water. Forms and spaces have sprung from a subconscious world and depict scenes that are part tinged by memory and part fantastical premonition. Sheehan’s work is also about ‘slow’ looking and the condensation of time formed in a meditative manner over periods of months. The content and compositional devices unfold before the viewer with the passing of time and reward the patient eye.
The use of pure pigment is of the utmost importance in achieving the highest intensity of individual colour and most importantly, when mixing it allows the greatest dynamic range for ‘colour space’ – the depiction of form and space, light and dark through colour. For this artist the act of painting is a form of alchemy by which colour and paint are magically transformed into images of the fantastic.