Simone Kearney's Painterly, Poetic Process

Salvatore Schiciano has written about the visual work, the "poetic materialism," of poet and artist Simone Kearney for MacAdam & Co. ArtTalk at Dinaburg Arts. "[O]ften it is difficult to define what is a painting, a performance, or a poem," says Schiciano about Kearney's work. Her "explorations feed cyclically into her content as well as into her form." More:

Kearney’s “Parts Of Parts,” a series begun last year, is a painterly process at once, simple and complex. Rectangles of unstretched muslin are painted with water-based dyes and acrylics, than sewn into grids consisting of twelve panels. Each section presents a binary of two colors that collide and mingle at diluted horizons so as to suggest peaks, valleys, mountains, wind, and waves. The assembled sketch-like iconography, presented serially, create a vacillating effect for the viewers.

The inspiration for this series comes from Amergin Glúingel’s The Song of Amergin, believed to have been the first Irish poem. It opens “I am the wind on the sea / I am the stormy wave” and continues for 20-some lines as the warrior bard poet diffuses and absorbs himself (the “I”) across land, sea, animal, and even words. Kearney, born and raised in Ireland, echoed the expression in her muslin paintings of the wind and sea. Yet not in a literal or representational way but iconographically and metaphorically keeping with the theme of ambiguity.

Read more, and moreover, check out the paintings on muslin, here.