So we have decided to up sticks and head for the bright lights of Dublin. Actually I’m from Dublin so the lights aren’t so bright for me. We are locating next to Waterstone’s in Dawson Street, a good location for all intents and purposes.

Maybe not a good time for a new venture, but after I saw the place I felt this would be something special.

I noticed going through the galleries in London, how big they were, the private galleries that is. I was wondering how they could afford this. Anyway when the place came up, I thought maybe we could do something here and …..here we are.

On another topic entirely, a couple of weeks ago I popped into Gerard Mc Gourty’s studio. I am always fascinated by this artist.

I am not an art historian, but I have a reasonable handle on the art movements. Gerard’s work always reminds me of an artist in a serious art movement. He has forged out a style for himself, in my opinion unique, and he has made his canvas a wonderful exploratory machine, where he investigates different phenomena for himself. His topics can include early childhood, school days, current and past economics and history, romance. In other words the whole gamut of human experience, real and imaginary. So what do I particularly like about his craft. His light, opaque , pale colours which he uses sometimes. They are brilliantly interwoven, and if you pay close attention to his brushwork you will see a myriad of colours which he uses to achieve these effects. Oftentimes when artists go for too pale or subtle colours they can end up anaemic and uninteresting. There is a certain virility in Gerard’s pales, which when observed in a whole painting, makes me marvel at the variety he has used.

I often have the pleasure of visiting people’s homes, who have bought work from Sol Art, and when ever I go back to a Gerard McGourty, people always talk of how the painting has grown on them.

Then there are Gerard’s characters or should I say caricatures. Sometimes they remind of Le Broquey’s tinker children from the thirties. Sometimes they have the naïveté of Daniel O Neil’s innocent big eyed females. Sometimes they are hardened characters who are hustling their way through life.

Gerard can then throw these characters together in different relationships and from there we get a good account of Gerard’s take on things.

What I like about him though is that it is pictorial and experimental. Gerard seems to be always working out his correspondences between the elements in his painting. In other words the picture or the narrative or the experiment, takes place with the paint on the canvas, the paint is like his mystic potion to see what picture will emerge. Sometimes he can work on a painting for years, to get the balance he is working for.

On top of that he is not limited by a linear real image. He can have several layers of images going on simultaneously which for me adds to the excitement of the work, which reminds me of Chagall. They are not orderly but can merge into one another which also gives the cubist effect.

To be honest I haven’t exhausted the themes in Gerard’s work(if there is a pattern to this?). I am slowly making a study of these. Suffice to say, you have a fair measure of kings and queens, chess boards, fences, school memorabilia, buildings, many balconies.

So what does all this mean?

I’ll leave it for another day.

My van just got clamped.

80 euro fine is all I need.

OK, OK. Dawson Street is a freeway from 4pm.