Donal Moloney-Lecture by Visiting Artist

WWe had the opportunity of listening to the lecture of London based abstract painter Donal Moloney, and gain an in-depth understanding of his process of arriving at the subjects for his mysterious paintings. The process was equally fascinating as the works themselves. Moloney initially honed his skill as a painter by painting landscapes on canvases primed with layers and layers of rabbit skin glue, etching into the glue and painting over with oils, acrylics, charcoals, pastels in a free, uninhibited way. He then gradually started painting in a collage like way, combining images from various photographs randomly collected from daily newspapers, Google images or Arabesque catalogues. After a few years, upon realizing that he had a tendency to collect the same type of images, he decided to change his image sources. He thought he would generate his own set of referencing images, instead of relying heavily on external sources.Maloney then started constructing abstract sculptures from cheap plasticine, photographing these and altering them on Photoshop and then incorporating the painting of these images in his works. Or at one point he made hundreds of small, loose paintings on different mundane topics like - say a rock concert, photographed these paintings, photo-shopped them and painted from these, to create large works that resembled jumbled up jigsaw puzzles. This is his process even today. The end result -strange compositions where the eye cannot grasp onto any particular thing unless the paintings are segmented, broken up or very closely scrutinized. He describes his work as having a "floaty sense of confusion in and around them, they look representational but are in fact abstract” He said he t hides images so that the viewer is blocked by them and does not get an in-depth gaze.

Donal Moloney, "Shrines" 42cmx53cm, Acrylic on Canvas, 2013

I found it interesting that the intention of his making work was rather similar to mine :

1. unrelated images so that the images cancel each other out and dodge meaning

2. works hint at something abstract though it is something figurative

3. humor in his works

4.hiding little elements that would shift the reading of the painting once noticed by the viewer

5.playful approach to making because if he tried something procedural it would fall apart

6.slippery narrative intentionally hard to interpret

7.referencing something unrecognizable

Donal Moloney's work reminded me of Where is Wally illustrations by Martin Hanford. Wally books consist of a series of detailed double-page spread illustrations depicting dozens or more people doing a variety of amusing things at a given location. Readers are challenged to find a character named Wally hidden in the group. Wally's distinctive red-and-white-striped shirt, bobble hat, and glasses make him slightly easier to recognise, but many illustrations contain red herrings involving deceptive use of red-and-white striped objects.

The motivation of both Moloney and Hanford seems to be hiding things in a maze and challenging the viewer/reader to enter this maze, find these familiar but unidentifiable objects though this seems to be more impossible in Maloney's work. 

My work "Hope is the Thing with Feathers" ,handcut paper, pen and ink, colour pencil, 2014

I would be very happy to achieve even half the level  of complexity of Donal Moloney paintings  in my works, sometime in future.It is a skill that I wish to hone over the next few years.