Lot 81: Charles Walsh , b. 1970 Abstract Black Painting 900 #6 oil on canvas, unframed

signed, titled and dated 2005 on the stretcher oil on canvas, unframed

152.5 by 152.5cm.; 60 by 60in.

Downpatrick, The Grove Gallery, Urbane, October 2005;
Belfast, Old Museum Arts Centre, Paintings - Charles Walsh, February 2006;
Belfast, Golden Thread Gallery, Seed of Zero, December 2006;
Belfast, gtGallery at the Switch Room, Things we may have missed, April 2007.

Influenced by modernists such as Malevich and Mondrian as well as the American colour field painters such as Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko, Walsh creates paintings which are austere in their seeming repetition and systemic structure - Abstract Black Painting 900 # 6 is composed of nine hundred small squares - but which are at the same time resonant with subtle colour harmonies. Walsh's method is unusual and as with the Old Masters, he makes his own paints, grinding the colours and thus learning the intimate characteristics of each pigment (each requiring a different level of oil). Each square is the product of dozens of glazes, the number being dependent on the nature of the pigment, as well as its relationship to the surrounding squares, with, in each case, the 'radiance' of the square being carefully planned. Obviously, this is a time consuming method, and each work usually remains in the studio for at least a year, if not much longer. Trained at the Chelsea and Camberwell Colleges of Art and the University of Ulster, Walsh lives and works in Killough, Co.Down. He has exhibited extensively at galleries such as the Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast; the Gallery of Photography, Dublin and the Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast and his work is held in the collection of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.