Nocturne – Adam Pomeroy
The Doorway Gallery, Dublin
★★★★
In Adam Pomeroy’s monochromatic paintings, motifs are articulated by a fall of pale, muted light, like a beam of moonlight.
A stillness pervades his work whether the subject is an object or, as is often the case, a person. Both still life items and people are usually individual presences, isolated in pools of darkness, with just faint indications of the parameters of a room, for example. If the subject is a person, he or occasionally she is as if lost in thought.
Jim by Adam Pomeroy Jim by Adam Pomeroy.
This basic format allows him to focus on one person or thing without losing a sense of the surrounding world. The enfolding darkness is not just a void, rather you feel everything is there in the shadows. It’s as if Pomeroy is constantly trying to establish how much he can exclude from visibility without losing a sense of the enveloping world. He can leave out quite a lot, in the event. As he sees it, he comes from a photorealist position, but allies realism with minimalism.
He refers to the tradition of the vanitas still life, a reminder of mortality, and identifies with the theme. It could be that the shaft of light, in his paintings, defines a brief moment of life in an infinitely greater darkness. He cast a melancholy spell, but the work is far from gloomy. In his concentrated attentiveness there is also a delight in sheer vitality.
Until March 22nd, thedoorwaygallery.com
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"Five of the Best art exhibitions to see this week." Aidan Dunne
Adam Pomeroy: Nocturne
Paintings by Adam Pomeroy,The Doorway Gallery, 24 South Frederick St, Dublin Until March 22 thedoorwaygallery.com
The show’s title is apt. Adam Pomeroy aims for what he describes as a “minimalist realism, paring down representation to the essential”. The result is, he says, as much about that is not there as what we can see. Each subject is animated by “mere flickers of light, like the perception of ghosts.” The viewer will instinctively, he believes, intuit what is not immediately visible.
Painting of the Nativity at Galway Cathedral
By Kernan Andrews Galway Advertiser, Thu, Dec 29, 2011
A painting of the Nativity by Adam Pomeroy, is currently on loan to and being exhibited in Galway Cathedral.
The painting is a modern day depiction of Mary and the new-born Jesus. The focus is on the mother and child with the intention to bring to the fore the human, emotive, content of the scene.
Other biblically inspired paintings by Adam Pomeroy can be seen in Ennis Cathedral and in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin
