Richard Hearns was born in Beirut and was raised in Dublin. He now works between Ireland and Thailand. His paintings document a search for an idyll, driven by a deep spiritual sensibility. His experiences and connections with three separate locations and cultures are combined to form a triangular history. Meditative layers are applied in a physical expression of form, drawn from the discipline of martial arts and the rhythmic nature of oriental life. Behind the search for paradise through paint lie all the tender realities of life.
Sheila Byrne (Curator) and John Dinan of Cong Art Gallery, Co. Mayo.
It is the artist’s unfaltering enthusiasm for his subjects that makes these paintings truly exquisite, beautiful and resolutely optimistic.
- Antoinette L. Sinclair, Oisin Gallery Curator
Excerpts from a Short Essay
by Miriam Duggan
(2008)
‘…speak to us of Beauty.
And he answered:
‘…Beauty is not a need, but an ecstasy. It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand outstretched.
Rather, it is a heart inflamed and a soul enchanted.’
The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
Art -Through it, the ephemeral becomes tangible, the distant is brought near and what appears to be spontaneous is, in fact, the result of deliberation and skill. Although realised in solitude, art is a dialectic – a chemistry between artist and viewer – which is at once deeply personal and universal.
As a very young boy, Richard Hearns remembers drawing his bedroom. Once finished, he was fascinated that his hands had translated a physical space into an idea on paper. Although he laughs as he recalls looking in wonder at the hand that achieved such a feat, it was a defining moment. From then on, it was through the medium of the visual that he sought to express himself and his understanding of the world around him.
Born in the Lebanon and raised in Ireland, Richard has spent much of his adult life travelling to the East. From his observation of Buddhist monks in Cambodia and later, through the practice of Martial Arts, he learned the importance of discipline, while living in south East Asia gave him the seclusion to reflect on his experiences and begin to form his vision.
All of these influences inform his work with a characteristic melange of cultural images. John O’Donoghue described landscape as the deepest meditation we can have and landscapes are an important feature of Richard’s work. But place is a fluid concept – a painting of a mountain is both familiar and strange, at once known and mysterious. In Home (2007), the hills are lush and verdant as after rain, the distant white cottage giving the painting a uniquely Irish feel. What makes the landscape mysterious, is the robed figure in the foreground, who, for all that he is exotic, nonetheless seems to belong. As we look at the hills over his shoulder, it is as though we are being asked to look at the familiar through fresh eyes, as though we were seeing it for the first time.
These figures are an important symbol in Richard’s painting. To him, they are like spirit guides or Everyman figures, reminding him and the viewer that all of the work of human hands involves spirit-struggle, growth and evolution. More importantly, their presence in some of his paintings is an exhortation to look again, to look differently, to go beyond the obvious.
One of his strongest features is Richard’s ability to capture light. In Vessel (2007), we see the silhouette of a fisherman with his boat in the last moments of full sun before it starts to set. The sunlight has made the water swollen, as though it were drenched with light and the fisherman seems to be enjoying a moment of quiet contemplation before getting on with finishing the work of the day. The beauty of Vessel comes from its deep evocation of a moment of stillness and ease with simplicity.
Richard describes his work as making a dream, trying to capture something elusive before it fades from his grasp. He first approaches a piece with the force of emotion and a physical power, believing that he needs to be both strong and disciplined in order to realise his ideas.
Sometimes a piece comes from the synchronicity of an idea and the materials available. An example of this is Pra Put (2005), a depiction of an elder monk on bamboo. On the border of Cambodia, Richard had nothing other than glue and ink when the painting came to him. ‘I had to capture that image, from the start, it just smiled back at me. I hadn’t got any of the materials that I needed, so I cut a piece from the wall of my hut. I wasn’t sure what I was trying to convey but I couldn’t stop.’ He still has no idea how it worked – he still believes it shouldn’t have – and yet it is one of his most profoundly moving works.
For Richard, painting is about connectivity, seeing beneath the humdrum and daily to the deeper realities which underpin our lives. His work is full of a sense that there is something more and it’s this fundamental belief that makes his work hopeful without being trite. Antoinette Sinclair describes him as having ‘an unfaltering enthusiasm for his subjects. He is resolutely optimistic.’ Mark Redden believes that he is ‘searching for an idyll’, while Richard himself describes each painting ‘as a fragment, a glimpse of something which might be beautiful’.
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
But you are eternity and you are the mirror.
The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
A short note that really typifies the essence of what my work is about.
My vision was formed over the years from constant drawing and sketching, and in my late teens largely by working alone, living on small islands off the coast of Cambodia.
From the age of nineteen I have continued to work restlessly on my motif.
As a child I drew hooded figures – when I travelled to Asia the hoods came down and a more transcendent figure emerged.
In retrospect over the last few years, when I first approached some leading galleries with my work, this type of work which comprised mostly of figure in landscape became my strongest motif and what I have been known for creating.
More recently the observational analytic pieces which I currently create on a near daily basis and feature on my blog are a really exciting challenge and I have found the disciplined process of working this way for the last year and a half to be extremely beneficial to me as regards ’seeing’ and my application of paint in descriptive passages.
Capturing the essence of things for example – a recent painting of various wild flowers and roses is imbued with the sense of ‘each individual flower’. There ‘essence’ is captured.
The more you really begin to teach yourself to look and observe the more amazing the most mundane object becomes until eventually it can become totally transformed in your minds eye. This developed approach to seeing is needed in creating paintings like this because you have to be able to communicate the excitement you felt to the viewer.
I owe this project largely to the Spanish master Velasquez – an inspiration to me.
With each of these paintings I have worked directly from life, whether that be in a studio environment or outdoor in nature.
Even in these quietly observed’ still life paintings’ I feel the figure present – perhaps we are seeing through his eyes.
To me my paintings and all my Work that has been created before, represent humanity, spirit, light and human endeavour.
Sincerely,
Richard Hearns