Tony O'Malley, HRHA, 1913 - 2003
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Tony O'Malley, HRHA (1913 - 2003)
"Tabayesco, Lanzarote"
Oil & collage on board, 11½" x 23½"
"Tabayesco, Lanzarote"
Oil & collage on board, 11½" x 23½"
"Not so much abstract as essence. I could not paint for the sake of the pigment of whatever, but I like abstract form in the painting which instills it with meaning and power. Abstraction does enable you to get under the surface, to get beyond appearance, and to express the mind. But abstraction for its own sake does not interest me."
Tony O'Malley
Tony O'Malley
Tony O' Malley was one of the major artists of twentieth century Irish painting. A self-taught artist, he was born in Callan, Co. Kilkeny in 1938. He was a late arrival to painting, only becoming a full-time artist in his forties when he was forced to retire from his career in banking through illness. Numerous visits to St. Ives in Cornwall in the 1950's, then a major artist's colony, established by Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth, proved to be a life changing experience for O'Malley. There, he met and befriended some of the major proponents of British abstract painting of that period, artists such as Peter Lanyon, Brian Wynter, Terry Frost and Patrick Heron among others. He subsequently moved to St. Ives in 1960, and it was to become his home for the next thirty years. In 1973 he married Jane Harris, and during the this decade, they divided their time between the Bahamas and his native Kilkenny. The influence of his time in the Bahamas is very noticeable, as he then started to use more vibrant colours in his paintings. In the 1990's he and his wife moved back to his birthplace in Ireland and bought a small cottage in Physicianstown in Kilkenny.
Landscape painting was his lifelong passion and he imbued his paintings with a distinct sense of atmosphere and place. He approached landscape painting in a visceral way, often scratching and scoring the surface of the boards that he painted on, with a razor blade. In combination with his highly distinctive and unique abstract and painterly motifs, he strove to evoke the spiritual element and communal memory that are inherent, but not always immediately apparent in every landscape, whether that of Cornwall, the Bahamas or his native Kilkenny.
Landscape painting was his lifelong passion and he imbued his paintings with a distinct sense of atmosphere and place. He approached landscape painting in a visceral way, often scratching and scoring the surface of the boards that he painted on, with a razor blade. In combination with his highly distinctive and unique abstract and painterly motifs, he strove to evoke the spiritual element and communal memory that are inherent, but not always immediately apparent in every landscape, whether that of Cornwall, the Bahamas or his native Kilkenny.