A square painting called Blue Wall hangs in the gallery, its surface streaked with intercrossing rectangles in different shades of blue, richly brushed, thick and riverine. But there are gaps showing warm woody red beneath calming waters. It’s an abstract painting, a minimalist one even, yet there’s a rawness suggesting heartfelt narratives, barely contained feelings, kept just about in check behind the blue facade.
In this little essayistic exhibition, Blue Wall’s creator, the abstract artist Sean Scully, lets you into his life with unguarded passion. At the other end of the room, he exposes what his abstract art sublimates and transfigures in a recent self-portrait. It’s an innocent, honest attempt to look in the mirror and see himself, sitting at home in front of one of his big striped canvases, the colours of his clothes bouncing against it. Scully seems to be in a state of artistic flux and a mood of self-scrutiny, not just “mirroring” himself, as the exhibition title has it, in that self-portrait, but imagining a counterlife in which an artist famous for a very recognisable style of abstract painting is a drawer of cups and a portraitist of family life.
