Beauty in a limited formula

BRIAN KENNEDY'S big, subtly coloured, well crafted prints have won him a certain standing in the trade", as they say.

Along with his exhibition in Cork, the Green on Red Gallery shows a dozen recent works large monoprints some so large as to stretch the technical facilities of most print studios.

They are built up in parallel stripes, in squares and rectangles, and in pillar like motifs, and as you may have guessed, colour does all the rest.

These simplified formats are by now almost common property and are to the works themselves what scaffolding is to a building.

The influence of Sean Scully seems plain in some places, though it may be more apparent than real. Kennedy's colour rarely resembles Scully's and his approach is more restrained and contemplative, without the frontal aggression which the older artist has made a hallmark of his style.

Some of the works are divided in two, either horizontally or vertically, while others are essentially on a three to one ratio. The edges are soft and furry rather than hard, and colours are sometimes put on over another colour, so that the surface is almost never uniform.

The result, unquestionably, is a series of very handsome, beautifully made, ultra tasteful prints, some of which for instance, Lagganston Study IV are quite incontestably beautiful.

But a question poses itself where do you go from here? This is an area which can be varied almost endlessly, but it is variation within set, narrow limits, Even with Sean Scully, I have had the feeling more than once recently that his stripes, inset squares and the other elements of his pictorial syntax are in danger of becoming a formula which yields gradually decreasing returns.

Kennedy is a print maker of genuine class and refinement, for whom greater formal variety and invention would surely pay good dividends.