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D. Dominick Lombardi is a writer for NY Arts based in New York. John Kingerlee is an Irish painter whose work will be on view at the Appleton Museum of Art in Ocala, Florida until March 30.
John Kingerlee, Inside Out, 2004. Collage and mixed media on paper. Courtesy of the artist.John Kingerlee, a UK-born practicing Muslim, has lived on the Beara Peninsula on the coast of Ireland for the past 25 years. He also spends about half the year in Granada, Spain, and in Morocco. All these lives, all these places, and all these beliefs bring texture to his work.
Influenced profoundly by Art Brut and the Cobra movement, Kingerlee approaches his work not only with the openness of a child, but also with an ages-old understanding of the basic elements of life. Kingerlee’s straightforwardness yields paintings such as Red Bird, Kilcatherine, 2006, or The Gathering on Beara, 2000–2004, two oil paintings that have the feel and presence of an actual place in time without the weight of accurate representation. Instead, Kingerlee places weight on the actual physical presence of the paintings, which in turn act like a residue of the experience. In both works, he manages to build depth that is quite mesmerizing and believable, with almost no reference to perspective, save for a bit of overlapping. In reference to perception, Kingerlee has said, “Just to have an ocular anything is a miracle to start with. To see anything is a miracle. Just to be here is a miracle. I’d like to communicate that to people because I feel that more and more as this age progresses, we are not having that same sense of the miraculousness of being here [as we once did].”
From his travels in India, Syria, Morocco, and Spain, Kingerlee picks up bits and pieces, debris from here and there, sketches and feelings. He makes mental notes, observes and absorbs, and brings it all back to his home studio in Beara. Beara can be seen as his foundation. The rough, rocky, and unforgiving westernmost most point of Ireland is so different than most anywhere else. There, the elements decide many things, from the unique colors of the rocks, to the materials used for construction. It’s a sparsely populated area, providing the artist with less distraction, and with more time to express and employ the things gathered from near and far. He approaches each work with new eyes, with probing questions, and with an unconventional approach.
A self-taught artist, Kingerlee isn’t averse to throwing a painting around a bit. However, he explains, “I’m not as abandoned as Jackson Pollock, because there’s a very slowed down, meditative sort of character lurking in me some of the time. The thing with Pollock is he was always violent, and I’m not violent like that. I get the feeling that Pollock was working with a ferocity that I’m not always working with. It’s fierce business swinging cans of paint around, moving fast. I can work like that occasionally, but at the same time I love the way Braque would work, slowly and gently. So I’m operating to some extent in both manners.”
Kingerlee also introduces a little kitsch here and there, an approach that results in very memorable, and highly refined works. Take, for instance, Looking Out to Sea, 2003, with its through-a-hole-in-the-wall vista; Inside Out, 2004, with its colorful collage elements and fanciful painting style; or The Encounter, 1994-2004, with its odd on-looking man, foreboding tree, and sweepingly insane composition. This is an artist who shoots from the hip, letting things come to the fore without prejudice or plan. Sure, he can paint over something he doesn’t like it, but he gets these pure sorts of things going that are so delightfully simple that you just have to smile.
Even so, there is a method to the madness. Kingerlee brings a fortified spirit to the work that enables him to take the time needed to appreciate the subtleties, to embrace the simplicities, and to enjoy the changes in his life. He even makes his own oil paints, working with dry pigments and binding mediums, in a way, to get closer to his subjects. By getting as close to the original, organic beginnings of the art making process as possible, he is able to live more completely in his subject’s world.
“To forget oneself is wonderful,” he says. A believable statement to be sure, and easily seen when viewing works such as the Klee-like painted collage Walking Through, 2005, or the atmospheric Ship and Shore, 2004. In most works, such as Grid Composition, 2003, or Grid Painting, 2004, we see a seething, shimmering, bubbling up of triggers, peripheral views, instincts, impressions, and perceptions that culminate into paintings that look as alive as the person who created them. And that’s the main point here. If an artist can bring an experience–an “ocular anything”–home, and somehow replicate it, however abstractly with paint, he has really done something special.
