Artist

Sean Caherty

Sean graduated with a Fine art degree in 2004 and has exhibited in London’s Curwen gallery, Salford Quays’ Lowry, and extensively throughout the North West.

"Work is mainly in household paint e.g. gloss, emulsion, but with one simple rule 'Do not use brushes'. Rather than limiting output it opens up the possibility of countless modes of production. This encourages innovation and promotes engagement with the viewer."

Sean’s work needs to be seen in the flesh. Entering into Sean's world of paint is a bit of a step into the unknown. The work is more akin to wall sculpture and is not easily conveyed through pictures. His Grid pieces take many months, some take years. Layers of paint build up over time and form their own relief. Sean relishes the movement and the life that paint assumes once he sets it in motion.

The artwork is the result of Sean starting the process of filling, dripping, mixing, swirling and setting the paint in every different way imaginable. Although the input into the work is carefully considered, the results are random and haphazard. Each piece of work is never the same just as a river running its course will never take the same path. Minute intricacies in the canvas, the viscosity of the paint and the air currents in his studio affect the drying and the course of the paint across the surface. Over time, and with many layers, these tiny deviations are exaggerated and become larger, more textured and take on a life of their own. This is what Sean is aiming for. Perfect chaos.

The work needs such patience and an understanding of the complex properties of paint, Sean really is a master of his own niche. The results are incredible splashes of colour and texture that you just don't find anywhere else.

"I experiment with the physical and material constituents and constraints of paint media in all forms. I consider my studio to be a laboratory in which I play with substrates, binders, extenders, siccatifs, pigments and dyes; extracted from commercial mass-produced paints. My research questions the impossibilities of contemporary technologies that supply and manufacture our material environment.

I do not draw or illustrate; I interrogate the materiality and phenomenology of paint in order to explore and exploit its potential as a sculptural and physical medium for three dimensional and decorative design, which belongs to a Fine Art tradition. By effectively challenging the traditions of painting and the condition of paint, I propose, design and manipulate strategic encounters between paint substances, found forms and elemental forces that will find expression in sculptural legacy; a happenchance method of creating artistic form from paint science."