The Old Jail Art Center
Sean Scully: Works from the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
February 6th – May 23rd 2010
Sean Scully: Works from the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
Catherine, 1989. Sean Scully. 102 x 136 in. Oil on canvas, two panels.
Collection of The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Gift of The Burnett
Foundation © 2009
The Old Jail Art Center is pleased to present the work of Irish-born American, Sean Scully. A selection of large-scale oils and small watercolors on loan from the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth will be on view beginning February 6th and continuing through May 23rd.
Scully is known for his monumental, non-representational abstract canvases, employing the stripe as his primary motif. This self-imposed, limited imagery is inspired by architecture, landscapes, and textile patterns, with influences by artists including Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock, as well as Piet Mondrian. Working the oils wet into wet, Scully gradually builds the surface of the canvas until reaching his desired effect, eventually creating thick, lush, tactile surfaces. His oil paintings are often made up of several panels joined together creating actual physical levels on which illusionary space can reside.
The OJAC exhibition also contains several small Scully watercolors juxtaposed with the grand oils. These watercolors are not studies for the large oils but independent works that use the imagery of stripes, bars and blocks. Viewers will be able to see Scully's versatility and his control of two very different mediums and scales.
Sean Scully's work continues to be exhibited and collected throughout the United States and Europe. His work is in many private and public collections, such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum of New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, Tate Gallery of London, The Irish Museum of Art in Dublin, Ireland, and other prestigious institutions around the world.
Untitled, 4.26.92, 1992. Sean Scully. 10 x 14 in. Watercolor on paper.
Collection of The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Gift of the Artist. © 2009