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Fenton Gallery: Billy Foley - March 2008
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Billy Foley
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7th - 29th March 2008
One of Cork’s most consistently impressive painters, Billy Foley will show his recent series of paintings at the Fenton Gallery from March 7th. Having last shown at the Fenton in the beginning of 2005, Foley further develops his preoccupation with line, in this current series. His previous pallet of greys and browns has shifted towards primary colours, which are set against a stark white backdrop. Each line has it’s own momentum and the use of separate distinct colours reinforces this. The gestural lines form shapes and borders which collide, merge and separate from each other. Foley will exhibit predominantly large paintings, and there will also be several small pieces on paper.
Foley has exhibited regularly in Ireland over the past thirteen years and has also had several major exhibitions in the Netherlands and Belgium. His work is represented in many private and public collections including the Arts Council of Ireland, Bank of Ireland, Crawford Municipal Art Gallery, University College Cork, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands, The Office of Public Works, The Irish Broadcasting Commission and Henry Ford and Sons Ltd.
“A notable trademark of Foley’s work throughout his career has been his consistency of artistic style. Nonetheless, he has wrestled with definitions and categorisations; but always returns to his interest in using abstraction as a means of describing the elemental force of things, rather than the ‘physical skin of objects and places’.
Each line has its own energy and personality, acting at times as though a high voltage force is running through it, or conversely, like a whisper or an echo fading into oblivion. It is almost like these lines are living entities – a harmonic that vibrates into the surrounding space, before bouncing back in on itself, inscribing new boundaries and forms. We see lines on a map, mutating cells, surging electrons, sinews, veins, even maybe the universe itself. And all this from the humble line.” Mark Ewart 2008
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- 16.1.08
oil and charcoal on canvas,
182 x 305cm
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- 28.11.07
oil and charcoal on canvas,
182 x 305cm
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- 15.01.08
oil and charcoal on canvas,
182 x 305cm
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- 24.01.08
oil and charcoal on canvas,
132 x 213cm
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- 29.01.08
oil and charcoal on canvas,
132 x 213cm
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