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Irish Arts Review
Back to the LighthouseAuthor(s): Mike FitzpatrickSource: Irish Arts Review (2002-), Vol. 25, No. 3 (Autumn, 2008), pp. 66-67Published by: Irish Arts ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20493355 .
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EXHIBITION
Back to the Lighthouse
John Shinnors finds inspiration in lighthouses,
scarecrows even stray cats, yet these recurring
motifs are not symbolic, writes MIKE
FITZPATRICK ahead of the artist's forthcoming
exhibition at the Wexford Arts Centre
ohn Shinnors' studio is located in a wonderful decaying
Georgian building in O'Connell Street, Limerick, dating
from 1816, the year after the battle of Waterloo. I began
my visit by viewing a map of France. Well, actually, a water
ark caused by a broken down pipe. 'It's fixed now' declared
a slightly disappointed Shinnors, as if the visual beauty of the
water mark was worthy of allowing it to develop even if it did
threaten the integrity of the studio contents. For Shinnors the visual world is paramount, his work has a logic that is transpar
ent while remaining mysterious and impenetrable. I am at his
studio to see the 'Back to the Lighthouse' series of paintings and
his new large-scale triptych, the centre piece of his forthcoming
exhibition at the Wexford Arts Centre to be held in October,
coinciding with the Opera Festival. Lighthouses have always had a fascination for Shinnors who finds them attractive by virtue of
their strong red and white or black and white markings and the
manner in which they zoom out of the landscape. He describes
them as monumental structures that man has built by the sea.
These gems rising from the edge of the land have a magnetic
quality. For him the fascination is more about their visual quali
ties rather than their purpose. He is intrigued that they also
functioned as a place where people lived, had pets and hung out
their washing. His new triptych is based on the Loophead
Lighthouse at the tip of Clare, where the lighthouse keepers'
cottages remain occupied. During a research trip there he noted
a young cat slip by the gateway of the lighthouse; he zoomed in
on this partial view of the 'puisin', storing the image in his mind
for future possible use.
What animates Shinnors about the Loophead area is not just
the lighthouse but its juxtaposition in relation to the narrow low
66 | IRISh- ARTS REVIEW AUTUMN 2008
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lying rocky fields of the west Clare landscape. He is fascinated by
the skinny black and white Friesian cattle intermingling below the static black and white of the lighthouse. Shinnors is not
interested in painting panoramic traditional landscapes and although he draws from reality, the objects he selects are per
sonal emblems which form the focus points of highly abstracted
paintings. He regards this new work as straight up and at you, a
selection of three objects each given equal consideration, not the views one associates with usual forms of landscape painting
as its subject matter (Fig 1). He has concentrated on three par
ticular objects all given equal status in terms of focus and scale.
The image of the lighthouse's resident black and white cat has,
he feels, crept into the painting and is now a huge element of the
work. The biggest cat in Munster, possibly in Ireland, he jokes.
The centre piece of the painting is the lighthouse itself and on
the right a trademark recurring motif of the artist's work, a
sweater hanging on the clothesline. As Shinnors formulates the composition it becomes a subtle
range of tones which appear at first glance to simply range
monochromatically from black to white, yet on closer inspection one encounters a cacophony of colour that subtly seeps through
the work (Figs 3, 4 &5). The strength of the painting lies in its
strong graphic composition combined with the wonderful phys icality and interplay of the multiple brushstrokes. Shinnors strives on images from the world around us which combine with
his unique vision and ability to reinterpret these images within
his highly developed language of painting. He feels his paintings
are accessible to everyone, but as with any language, one has to
spend time and have a willingness to allow the work to commu
nicate. Viewing his work is not about visual tricks or interpret
ing the meaning of his iconographic subject matter, it is simply
about enjoying the visual interplay of tone, shape, colour, tex
ture and form. Shinnors is a realistic painter, in that he takes
realistic subject matter from the world around him, yet the
sophistication of how he sees and processes that subject matter
takes his work into a different sphere. He remarked that on a
regular walk when he comes across an interesting view, he imag
ines himself lifting off the ground some twenty or thirty metres
so as to contemplate the view from differing vantage points.
When he takes his chosen subject matter to the canvas these
elements become aspects of pure painterly considerations.
As I shift my gaze from the painting to the water mark on the
wall I realise that Shinnors never strays off that particular map,
his environment continuously feeds his visual world and presents
opportunities for paintings. His world may include other personal
narratives and concerns that enter the paintings but ultimately it's the pigment, the brush and the canvas that carry the only sig nificance for him. When I viewed the triptych recently with Shinnors, and on seeing the work afresh, while it was hung in a neutral space away from the studio, he uttered the words that indicate his satisfaction by simply declaring 'that's enough'. U
MIKE FITZPATRICK is Director of Limerick City Gallery of Art.
John Shinnors 'Back to the Lighthouse', Wexford Arts Centre,
6 October - 2 November 2008.
All images @OThe Artist. Photography? Matthew Gidney.
1 JOHN SHINNORS b. 1950 The
Lighthouseman's
Cat and Washing (triptych) 2008 4
oil on canvas
153 x 406cm
2 Lighthouse 5 2008 oil on linen : 26.35 x 54c m
3 Lighthouse 1 . 2008 oil on linen 26.67 x 26.67c
4 Lighthouse 2 -s 2008 oil on linen n f 26.67 x 26.67c
5 Lighthouse 3 < ! 2008 oil on linen 26.67 x 26.67cm ,tb
AUTUMN 2008 IRISH ART'S REVIEW | 6 7
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