Larry and Margaret Wiener in front of the painting, That Moves the Water Through the Rocks.

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CURRENT EXHIBIT REVIEWS | HUGH O'DONNELL

RETURN TO REVIEWS | The Litchfield County Times

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Kent Tribune article reprinted here: 6/25/2007
Scofield's Sketchbook: Hugh O'Donnell at the Morrison Gallery in Kent
By John Scofield

Hugh O'Donnell, professor of art at Boston University and resident of Washington, CT, is having an exhibition of his paintings at the Morrison Gallery in Kent. Last Saturday an enthusiastic crowd of art connoisseurs shows up at the beautifully lit, handsome gallery space where art dealer Bill Morrison has somehow maintained if not amplified the pleasant, homey atmosphere and collegiate tenor of the openings he used to have in the living room of his house.

Among the local artists, designers and connoisseurs who contributed to this good cheer on Saturday were Hugh and Cynthia Hill, Mike and Karen Gordon, Larry and Margaret Wiener, Virginia Bush, Michael Gellatly, Kate Vick, Ellie Burns, Peter Kirkiles and sons, Michael Anderson, Emily Dwight, Vickie Chess, Ryo McClean, Jim and Judy Perkins and the entire Morrison family. Carlen was absolutely stunning in her bright orange dress. Note to artists: make sure she does not wear this dress in front of your work - you won't win!

Mr. O'Donnell, 57, has been showing his art since he was 25-years-old, and he boasts an impressive exhibition record. We spoke with him at length about his work today and he surprised us with his descriptive abilities:

Kenttribune.com: The paintings in your new show at the Morrison Gallery in Kent are for the most part abstract. How do you see your work relative to the first generation of abstract expressionists, particularly Ashile Gorky, Roberto Matta and Richard Pousette-Dart?

Hugh O'Donnell: "The abstract Expressionists are part of my culture but a more formative influence was my two year schooling in Japan in the mid seventies and my study of garden architecture and Suibokuga or ink painting from the Momoyama period. With regard to abstraction Robert Motherwell once put this issue very clearly in a conversation that I had with him. All visual language, be it writing, or graphic is abstract. The main distinction is the degree of abstraction. I bring emphasis to aspects of the perceptual world that I am concerned with and edit out those things that matters less. The degree and quality of the emphasis is the degree of abstraction.

KTC: Many people don't understand a picture unless it has recognizable subjects; a cow, a tree, the human figure etc. How would you describe your subject matter?

HO: "The main subject of the work is the struggle for light and space that goes on every where. I see it so clearly in my own garden and I feel it in my own body. I have always been interested in contests, of protagonists struggling together. It goes on in ones own mind and it goes on at every level of the universe, from the molecular level to the passing of day into night or of sensations where sadness can turn into anger like a sudden change in the weather. The growing world has been my teacher. The thing is, some of the things I perceive are not visual. There are somatic sensations in the body there is the ebb and flow of ones own energy. Always there is flux. Some time energy flows like a stream and other times it gets dammed up. What does this look like?"

KTC: For a lot of visitors to art galleries, the title of a work is a window into the artist's state of mind. Your titles convey simultaneously a specific poetic description and a sense of the mysterious. I am thinking of That Ropes the Blowing Clouds, The Waters of the Heart, A Weather in a Quarter of the Veins and Light Breaks on the Secret Lots. Can you tell us something about what a title of a picture means to you; how it relates to your subject matter?

HO: "How can one discuss these things visually? A lot of the paintings have titles taken from lines of Dylan Thomas who moved in his imagination between inner and outer feelings and tried to create analogs of this. Two poems in particular are, The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower, and A Process In The Heart. "

KTC: Has living in Connecticut had an influence on your approach to painting? Is there a work in this show that is a good example of that influence?

HO: "Living by and working with Lake Waramaug starting in 1991 brought me to an interaction with nature that freed me from needing to copy what God had already done so well. I realized that I could make a homage to natural influence by building something that had a likeness to the trees the water and the vital rhythmic process I saw there. I look at a bush and want to make a likeness, that is to say to make something that I like about the bush. The Painting And The Bush Was Not Consumed is my favorite painting. The title is the literal translation from the Bible. This painting however was not intended to be the burning bush. I set out to make a branching structure that was as analogous to the vascular tree as it was to a plant. Recently I completed nine 14 foot windows for the sisters at Wisdom House in Litchfield for a chapel where all faiths can find inspiration from the Book of Wisdom. This was a long project to find a way to bring a study of nature into the mainstream of supporting faith. In the later works like Rest and Til You Stood Before Me musical notation, that other graphic abstract language has arrived and gradually the rhythmic world of nature is colliding with the beat and flow of music."

Most of the works in this show are large oils on canvas. The painting that struck us as the best at working the cusp between nature, abstraction and movement is titled That Moves the Water Through the Rocks. It has dark green leaves and tendrils on an out-of-focus white ground. At eight feet in height, it is one of the pictures here that needs a certain scale to succeed. And speaking of plant material, like Van Gogh's sunflowers, it's more than a little menacing. If you liked the handsome intensity of Jonathan Scoville's cloud paintings, but wish to stay more earthbound, give O'Donnell a try. MORE REVIEWS

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