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Corbel - Enclave Series - 2021Private Collection, London

UPCOMING

SOTHEBY'S

Irish Art, RHA Dublin & New Bond St. London: November 12-22, 2023

ZONAMACO

Group Exhibition - Cadogan Gallery, Mexico City: February 7-11, 2024

THE LIVING MOUNTAIN

Solo Exhibition - Cadogan Gallery, Milan: May 2024

VIDEO

RICHARD HEARNS - IN A NEW YORK MINUTE




RICHARD HEARNS - ADARE MANOR




RICHARD HEARNS - ENCLAVE




RICHARD HEARNS: LONDON 2018




RICHARD HEARNS - CRUCIBLE




RICHARD HEARNS - BARCELONA 2017




WORKS

BIOGRAPHY

Richard Hearns paints in the wild landscape of The Burren National Park in County Clare, Ireland. Each painting is an extension of his physical surroundings - earth, sea and sky - materialising the artist’s experiences and memories of colour and natural phenomena. Born in Beirut and raised in Ireland, Hearns is deeply aware of the unique cultural backgrounds of both aspects of his heritage. Articulated in his abstract paintings, his experiences and connections with the traditions of these separate locations and cultures combine to form a triangular history. He endeavours to express his understandings of exploration, discovery and identity through the medium of paint.

Hearns' paintings document a search for an idyll. Meditative layers are applied in a physical expression of form drawn from the rhythmic nature of rural life. His work is palpably physical: marks are an extension of his arm, the canvases mirror his height, and his energy is channelled through the brush onto the canvas. The exuberant colours of his works express his experiences of nature and its intensity, inviting the viewer to participate in this celebration of memory, colour and form. Only an allusion to landscape, Hearns' raw, indecipherable marks drive the composition to the edge of the canvas creating a distinct language of undulation, recession and space.

My dual heritage has greatly influenced and inspired my paintings. The Irish have always had an outward looking perspective and a unique identity in the world. Likewise, throughout history, the Lebanese people have covered great expanses in order to explore, learn, trade and grow.

- Richard Hearns

ESSAYS

COMPLETING THE CIRCLE

WHAT IS IT? IT IS HIM!

AUTONOMOUS YET REFERENTIAL

CURRICULUM VITAE

SELECTED SOLO SHOWS
2024 Solo Show, Cadogan Gallery, Milan
2023 Sheshia Retrospective, Clare, Ireland
2022 ‘Nomad’, Cadogan Gallery, London
2021 ‘Enclave’, Cadogan Gallery, London
2019 ‘The Cardinal’s Portrait’ The Sheen Centre for Thought and Culture, New York
2018 ‘Journey’, Cadogan Gallery, London
2016 'Where Your Treasure Is' The Sheen Centre for Thought and Culture, New York
2014 ‘Raw/Cooked: Last of the Summer Mackerel’, Galerie La Cornue, Paris
2013 'The Rural Idyll' Jorgensen Fine Art, Dublin
2012 ‘Paintings by Richard Hearns’, Offices of the Cardinal of New York, New York
2007 ‘Towards an Island’, Wonksiri Gallery, Koh Mak, Trad Provience, Thailand
GROUP SHOWS
2022 Sotheby's New Bond Street Galleries, London
2022 Houston City University, Texas
2022 Sotheby’s at the Royal Hibernian Academy, Gallagher Gallery, 15 Ely Place, Dublin
2022 Groundzero360, Houston Baptist Universty, Houston, Texas
2017 ‘Iomramh’, Espronceda Center for Arts and Culture, Barcelona
2014 Kunstler International Symposium, Villa Bohm, Neustradt an der Weinstrasse, Germany
2013 VUE, Royal Hibernian Academy, Gallagher Gallery, 15 Ely Place, Dublin
2012 The 182nd Royal Hibernian Academy Annual Exhibition, 15 Ely Place, Dublin
EDUCATION
2004 H DIP Art Craft and Design Education NCAD
2002 BFA Fine Art Interdisciplinary Digital Media IADT
2001 DIPLOMA Fine Art Interdisciplinary Digital Media IADT
AWARDS & RESIDENCIES
2015 Abstract Painting at the Kunstakademie, Bad Reichenhall, Germany
Selected to present work to the Prince of Wales on behalf of the Burren College of Art and NUI Galway
Artist in residence, Nave 12, Barcelona, Spain
2014 International Artist Symposium, City of Neustadt an der Weinstrasse, Germany 2012
2012 The Art Students League of New York, USA
2011 Artist in residence, Custom House Studios, Westport Quay, Co. Mayo
Fingal County Enterprise Board, Export Grant Initiative Award
2010 Artist in residence, Cill Rialaig Foundation, Bolas Head, Co. Kerry
2009 Artist in residence, The Burren College of Art, Ballyvaughan, Co. Clare
2006 Artist in residence, The Mantua Art Project, Mantua Co. Roscommon
COLLECTIONS
Irish State Collection
Galgorm Group, N. IRE
St Patrick's Cathedral, NYC
Naomi House Children's Hospice, UK
Aston Wealth Management, IRE
ITC company, IRE
SEPIL, IRE

PRESS

WHITEHOT MAGAZINE OF CONTEMPORARY ART
RICHARD HEARNS: AUTONOMOUS YET REFERENTIAL
By Raphy Sarkissan, June 2021

Richard Hearns carrying Tome (2021) at the Burren National Park, County Clare, Ireland, 2021

Demonstrating the artist’s distinct command of raw mark-making that drives the composition to the threshold of the landscape, Enclave can be read as an exceptional tribute to the legacy of Abstract Expressionism, a term used by Alfred H. Barr Jr. in 1929 to characterize the non-representational paintings of Vasily Kandinsky. While these paintings by Hearns recall the visual syntax of such modernist masters as Arshile Gorky due to their sweeping drips, Franz Kline due to their gestural bravura, and Mark Rothko due to their blurred edges, it is perhaps a number of paintings by Willem de Kooning executed in the late fifties through 1960 with which the recent works of Hearns conjure up the most powerful aesthetic interactions.

Action Painting, the term coined by the art critic Harold Rosenberg in 1953 to characterize the immediacy of the painter’s handling of the brush to produce gestural traces upon the surface of the canvas, remains inseparable from our interpretation of the paintings of the Enclave series. In his pivotal article “The American Action Painters,” Rosenberg notes, “The painter no longer approached his easel with an image in his mind; he went up to it with material in his hand to do something to that other piece of material in front of him. The image would be the result of this encounter. … Art as action rests on the enormous assumption that the artist accepts as real only that which he is in the process of creating.” Rosenberg’s emphasis on the process of painting as an end in itself sheds light on the aesthetic directions of such modernist painters as Gorky, Kline, Rothko and de Kooning. Having assimilated formalist elements from the visual syntax of these modernist masters with supreme fluency, Hearns expands the potentialities of Abstract Expressionism. With its pictorial allusiveness to the landscape genre, barely decipherable phantoms of architectonic forms, colored materiality and recurrent architectural titles, the distinct pictorial language of Hearns redefines and reinvents the expressive possibilities of the medium of oil on canvas through its singular set of parameters. This preoccupation of the artist with pairing nature and architecture abstractly and linguistically reactivates the historical and phenomenological questions posed by Filippo Brunelleschi’s so-called scientific perspective. While Hearns “registers,” “records” and “marks” his observations of the atmospheric fluctuations within nature and upon architectural surfaces and forms, he also “registers,” “records” and “marks” his observations of painting’s own historical and conceptual fluctuations.

Link to article

THE BROOKLYN RAILRichard Hearns: Nomad

By Raphy Sarkissian, December 22, 2022

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CLARE CHAMPIONArtist still exploring even after putting down roots in Clare

December 13 2022

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IRISH INDEPENDENT Artist Richard Hearns: ‘I saw magentas and yellows radiating in jungles, and turquoise and cyan waters’

By Niall MacMonagle, December 04 2022

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CLARE ECHOBeirut explosions 'left city on its knees' - Burren artist Richard Hearns - Clare Echo

By Cian O Brion, October 4, 2020

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CLARE ECHORichard Hearns gives an explosion of colour from the Burren Landscape

By Paraic McMahon, September 2019

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WALL STREET INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINERichard Hearns: exhibition preview

September 13 2018

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THE NATIONAL ARTS & CULTURE MIDDLE EASTRichard Hearns is an abstract artist with an abstract cv

By Seth Jacobson, November 1 2018

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BOSTON GLOBEArtist draws inspiration from rich palette of dual heritage

By Kevin Cullen, April 15 2016

Link to article

IRISH INDEPENDENTDarkness to light through love and inspiration for artist Richard Hearns

By Hilary A White, December 28 2015

Link to article

CONTACT

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