MTC ART GALLERY

The MTC community art program presents:

Plenty Hidden: Self-Storage Revealed

Paintings by Seamus Berkeley

Born in Dublin, Ireland, Seamus Berkeley moved to Taos, New Mexico in 1999 in order to integrate into a more diverse artistic community, drawing upon Taoseños as subjects and inspiration for his paintings. In 2005, Seamus opened a studio in Berkeley, Calif., and divides his time between there and his home in Taos.

Berkeley’s paintings are extensively collected, both nationally and internationally, most of his work being commissioned fine art. For the past two decades, Berkeley has concentrated on oils as his primary medium, focusing on figurative and portraiture in a representational impressionistic style.

Berkeley enjoys creating artwork that speaks to the viewer. “The primary goal is to make a good painting. A good painting has the potential to evoke a memorable experience for the viewer,” he said. Berkeley’s work is not only an expression of himself, but it is his own personal contribution to visually recorded history.

Berkeley has won several regional and national awards for his artwork, including Best Portrait at the Oil Painters of America show in 2000. He is the founder and past-president of the Taos Society of Portrait Artists and a member of the Oil Painters of America. Berkeley’s work has been featured in such publications as Southwest Art, Information Warehouse, The Taos News, Art-Talk and The Trail-Gazette.

Seamus’ influences include esteemed artists Charles Cross, Nancy Guzik, Quang Ho, David Lefel, Ron Sherr, Richard Schmid and Teresa Vito. Additionally, he has traveled worldwide to study first-hand the works of master painters.

“The beauty of art is not only in the completed work but in its process,” Berkeley said. “The creative process in art is a movement — the external world is seen from the artist’s perspective and is then returned to the external world through the chosen media. The result of this reflective process is a work of art to be shared by others.”

Plenty Hidden: Artist's Notes

There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.
— Pablo Picasso

Several months ago, Amy, a friend of mine, mentioned that she had been investigating and writing on the topic of self-storage. I remember sitting more upright on my futon as I felt this was a timely subject worth exploring: I travel a lot, have stored things while away and had some inkling that the topic was a big one.

As we continued our conversation, Amy described how self-storage is a pervasive, yet unnoticed phenomenon of our culture. I soon realized that the notion of things being hidden related to a new series of paintings I had been conceptualizing for some time: Paintings of the often unseen beautiful geometric forms within everyday scenes – little snippets of our urban environment that, viewed apart from their larger context, provide endlessly fascinating, kaleidoscopic views. This current set of paintings is based on my observations of this beauty.

My painting practice has always been to engage in actively seeing around the rigid boundary placed on objects by the verbal mind – boundaries locking me into seeing life as named objects only: building, wall, street. These boundaries eventually lead to a certain dullness of experience: I’ve seen it all before and there is nothing new to see, or even further, I just don’t see at all.

Painting gives me the opportunity to look at the world actively as though I’ve never seen it before by demanding that I peer around worddefined ‘objects’ to reframe the visual landscape: that metal building is now a pattern of red and grey shapes; the wall a band of green dissecting large trapezoids of brilliant blue and cool grey; the street a horizontal grey and white punctuated by a splash of yellow. Suddenly, the abstract appears. I didn’t even need to invent: It is already right there, in any setting, all the time. This seeing of the abstract, is for me, enlivening and motivates me to paint.

I’m also moved to create paintings in the hope that this sense of newness will be conveyed through the work to the viewer that they may see what I’m seeing. Why? To share the joy of seeing blue or red or a shape again!

The problem that I’ve considered for ‘Plenty Hidden’ is how to express ‘seeing’ in a more concrete and understandable way than I have in the past. In this series, my approach to this end is printing the reference photos of the larger scene from which the ‘objectless’ paintings emerged to make the connection between the two more apparent.

As you look at the photos, please enjoy discovering the source of the paintings contained within them. And the next time you are out for a walk, I invite you take a closer look for the gems – there are plenty hidden!
— Seamus Berkeley
July 2010