Painter Sean Scully, now almost 77 years old, has never shied away from ambition.
Backs and Fronts (1981) Image courtesy of Magonza, Arezzo. Photographer, Michele Sereni ©Sean Scully. Born in Dublin, raised in England, Scully has lived in the United States since 1975, where he has relentlessly pursued a singular goal: to “save abstract painting.”
Doric Blue and Blue (2015). Photographer: Robert Bean. Image courtesy of the artist. The exhibition now at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, “Sean Scully: The Shape of Ideas,” documents that effort. Here, the artist explains the creative process behind one of the paintings.
Chelsea Wall #1 (1999) courtesy of PMA.
Scully on Scully
The meaning, inspiration, and technique behind Sean Scully’s “Wall of Light Orange,” as narrated by the artist himself.
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“The idea for the wall of light paintings came to me really from a trip that I made in Mexico where I was visiting the sights, the ruins: Labna, Uxmal, Sayil, Chichen Itza, Coba, etc.”
“And they fascinated me because they had a kind of impenetrable, yet melancholy feel, and the light would play on the structures beautifully at different times of the day.”
“You know, in the evening, the stones were turned purple and nearly black …”
“… and in the morning, they would be orange and yellow.”
“And when I came back to a town called Zihuatanejo, I made little watercolor on the beach and unconsciously wrote underneath it Wall of Light.”
Wall of Light 4.84, 1984. Watercolor on paper. National Gallery of Art. Courtesy of the artist. “This is a painting that describes also my use of color, which is very married to the art of painting, and to materiality.”
Wall of Light Orange Yellow (2000) courtesy Hugh Lane Gallery Dublin. ©Sean Scully “So all the colors are found on the painting. They're not chosen, and then applied. They're battled out on the work and the edges …”
“… you will see have a kind of rivulet running through them. So this is another kind of rhythm running through the wall.”
“So what I wanted to do was make something that was structured, but also very emotional.”
Wall of Light Orange
The “Sean Scully: The Shape of Ideas” exhibition is showing at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through July 31.
Staff Contributors
- Designer and developer: Sam Morris
- Reporting: Stephan Salisbury
- Editing: Kate Dailey
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