Day Leaving, 2004
Oil on Canvas
Copyright The Artist; Courtesy, Timothy Taylor Gallery, London

2 panels; oil on canvas

Each: 274.3 x 167.6 cm (108 x 66 in)
Overall: 274.3 x 335.3 cm (108 x 132 in)

Signed, titled and dated verso on both panels:
Left panel: 'Hora/Foscant'/Sean Scully/8.04
Right panel: 'Hora/Foscant'/'Day Leaving'/Sean Scully/8.04

Provenance:
The artist; Timothy Taylor Gallery, London, 2005

Exhibition History:
Sean Scully, Para Garcia Lorca, exhibition catalogue (Madrid, Comunidad de Madrid, Direccion General de Archivos, Museos y Bibliotecas, 26.10 - 11.12. 2005), no. 20 colour illustrations p. 77

Notes:
Sean Scully was born in Dublin in 1945 but grew up in London. He studies at Croydon College of Art and at Harvard University before settling in the United States in 1975. His work combines varied influences in a conglomeration of Minimalism, Conceptual Art and Abstract Expressionis. At first glance his paintings seem minimalist because of their simple patterns of contrasting colours. However, his attention to detail and use of paint layers give his works interesting texture.

From the beginning, influenced by Mark Rothko and Bridget Riley he chose non-objective painting and in recent years Scully has moved from the periphery into the centre of contemporary discussion on non-representational painting. The source for much of Scully's abstraction is in his architectural and urban environment, particularly New York. His everyday life is translated into a continuous colour landscape. His energetic layering of colour upon colour causes the surfaces of his paintings to vibrate and to 'open' up before the viewer. It engages the viewer's attention, while, at the same time, the geometric structure imposes a sense of distance. Looking at his work as a whole, he uses a limited repertoire of motifs, comprising vertical, horizontal and , occasionally, diagonal stripes of varying lengths and breadths together with blocks of layered colour.

Just as life's relationships can be made and broken - the birth or death of a child, the loss of a parent, the end of a marriage, the leaving of a city, the leaving of friends - the abstract, coloured shapes in his work engage relationships of harmony and disharmony. In this way much of his work can be read as distinctly biographical and the work in question is no exception. Day Leaving is an elegy to his mother leaving. Her death had a particular impact on his work.

Copyright The Derek Williams Trust
By Tanja Pirsig-Marshall
Not for sale.