Silent World

Comments by Margaret Parry on the Lanuage of Colour

Since Adrian’s first exhibition at the Bank of Ireland, Eyre Square, in April 1998, he has continued to build a new portfolio of work that has challenged and extended his abilities.

It was entirely possible that this would not happen. Having Autism complicated by profound deafness, it was possible that Adrian would retreat into the impenetrable world from which he first emerged to display his gifts.

Fortunately this did not happen and his work has developed, displaying a greater confidence as he strives to understand his media and subject.

He has continued to learn, paying close attention to the qualities inherent in different types of paint, and how he can manipulate them to best express his subject. He has learnt how to use a palette knife to create a textured surface and how to maximise the fluidity of watercolours to express subtlety and tenderness.

He has mastered the chalky qualities of soft pastel. This medium inevitably leaves him covered in coloured dust. This residue, once an obstacle to cleanliness, has become an integral part of the process and is completely accepted as such, often with some amusement.

Adrian’s relationship with his materials is a very intimate one. They are not only a means to an end, they are an end in themselves. He savours the shape and texture of his work tools, reshaping his paintbrushes with his fingers after use, straightening all his paint tubes and carefully chipping or peeling away any stray flakes of paint from around the thread underneath the cap.

Squeezing paint from the tube is a painstakingly precise operation. Each colour is placed at equidistant intervals around his palette. The scent of each colour is inhaled before each careful deposit. All tubes are straightened before being replaced into their appropriate container.

Adrian is fascinated by the way acrylic paint hardens on his mixing plate and how it can be lifted and peeled away in sheets of colour. He has worn out several palette knives through constantly mixing and remixing paint, testing the flexibility of the blade, entranced by it’s pliability bending it to its’ limit; and beyond.

He has learned not be frugal with paint. When he first started working with a palette knife, he found it rather strange that he was being asked to use, in his opinion, such vast quantities of paint. It was an alien concept to him. Through practise, he began to revel in the fusion of so much colour, folding and melding the precious material lovingly.

He has quickly learned how to handle this method of transcribing paint, and the work he has produced is rich, energetic and surprisingly self-assured. Working with Adrian involves a period of demonstration so he is able to learn the techniques of using different methods and media. He is then encouraged to use what he has learnt to describe his subject. In this way he has evolved and invented a widely varying repertoire of approaches and productions.

Adrian’s ability encompasses fine detail, calligraphy and drawing with the tiniest detail perfectly reproduced; yet he can throw blocks of exquisite colour and form with seeming casualness to create a wonderfully balanced composition with bold elimination of all superfluities.

One of the most satisfying aspects of Adrian’s work is his capacity to create unexpected but delightful surprises. His pictures are full of them. This is one of the ways we are allowed a glimpse of Adrian’s understanding of the world and how he views it: a tiny window into a fascinating and unique mind.