Conor Th e E n emi es Walton of P r o g r e s s
C o n o r Wa l t o n Th e E n e m i e s
of
P rog r ess
CK Contemporary
Lego Mondrian
oil on linen
10 x 14 inches
Conor Wal ton: T he A r t is t as an Enemy of Progre s s by John Seed
“We are not, nor were we ever, in control of our destiny.” - Conor Walton
In Conor Walton’s Lego Mondrian a human skull peers from behind a wall of plastic Lego blocks. The skull, a subtle natural form, is also a traditional “vanitas” symbol that has served generations of painters as an image of mortality. The Lego blocks are children’s toys— modular bricks molded by a machine—that click together to form the severe geometries of a Mondrian painting. These two visual elements are so different that their appearance together is decidedly unexpected, even jarring. In fact, their obvious dissonance raises a question in the viewer’s mind: what on earth are they doing in the same painting? The answer is that Walton has pitted these carefully chosen items against each other to generate a symbolic drama. Measuring only 10 x 14 inches, Lego Mondrian is what Walton thinks of as “a little picture about big issues that clearly demands interpretation.” The main issue in this case is the battle between nature (the skull) and culture (the Lego Mondrian). It is a battle in which the Lego wall plays dual roles: it mocks Modernist high culture and attempts to hide the more convincing and threatening reality implied by the skull. The skull—as Walton explains—is also a symbol of the inherent superiority of natural forms: Rectangles and grids are hardly ever found in
nature because they are structurally rigid and brittle. Living nature always follows the path of growth, which is curved and flexible. A skull is a perfect example; it is generated out of continuous curves. Structurally, it is way more sophisticated than the Mondrian grid. In my book it is also way more beautiful, as things which grow are always more beautiful than things that are schematically constructed. I think the skull wins the battle in this painting because of its subtlety and depth. Of course, this confrontation between nature and culture is about more than beauty. Walton acknowledges that “art and nature have always been at war” but he also perceives humankind as now being in its most precarious situation ever, moving with alarming rapidity towards environmental catastrophe and possible extinction: those are the deeper concerns animating his paintings. Culture is a “façade” and an artificial construction that blocks our view of nature and mortality. The belief in progress, a key element in modern culture, also shields us from the consideration of grander forces that may shape our destiny. If you let these views sink in for a moment you will understand Conor Walton, and you will also understand why he is an “enemy of progress.” Both as an artist and as a father, nothing worries him more than the sense that he and his family—like other first world families—are living in a state of grace, temporarily sustained by fragile economic and cultural constructs . As he recently wrote: Despite the fact that I live in
a very peaceful part of the world, well insulated from most of its troubles, at this point I fear for my children’s future and the future of everything that I hold dear. Because of his skeptical view of progress, Walton’s ideas about art are distinctly retrospective. The currently accepted model of art history in which tradition is discarded during an insistent and unified march “forward” strikes Walton as ludicrous and perilously naïve. Ever since he read Sir Kenneth Clark’s Civilization at the age of 17, Walton has been struck by what he sees as the “discontinuity with classical or humanist concerns that modernism embodied.” For Walton, to be a serious artist has meant adopting the models and methods of earlier European masters whose concerns for nature and humanity were broader and more deeply sourced. His work—like theirs—still has its basis in observation, and nature remains his ultimate touchstone and reference point.
The Enemies of Progress
Oil on linen
24 x 48 inches
In his painting The Enemies of Progress Walton includes a small figure of himself—brush and 1
palette in hand—leading a crew of misfits that includes dinosaurs, extinct and endangered species, indigenous peoples, old gods and heroes. The assembled figures stand for all those whose beliefs, values, and ways of life are threatened with obsolescence; those whose very existence is undermined by the “March of Progress.” They are preparing to attack a gleaming but generic cluster of architectural forms, a bland, featureless utopia that resembles a modern city skyline. The Enemies of Progress is a principled, courageous, and darkly comical painting. As in all of Walton’s work, the strain of humor is extremely pointed: it is serious humor infused with tragedy.
The Joker Wins Again
oil on linen
The Joker Wins Again is Walton’s commentary on many situations in current culture, including the impotence of do-gooders. “We can see what is wrong,” Walton philosophizes, “but we can’t do anything about it.” The madness of high finance, as embodied by the speculative fever of the high-end art market, is symptomatic of the fact that the jokers are profiting. “This picture is not primarily about art-politics,” Walton explains. “It’s about the state of the world and the perversion of values, in which the whole business of art becomes a manifestation of decadence, read not as a cause but an effect. And I’m not offering a cure or a solution; I’m simply trying to manifest the symptoms myself, clearly and for all to see.”
Walton’s Phaethon, which features the artist’s son Ciarán, takes a contemporary event—a rocket launch—and traditionalizes it. Walton has titled the painting Phaethon in reference to the story of the son on the sun (Helios) who joyrides his father’s chariot through the heavens and nearly destroys them. Connecting his image to the tragic myth of a hero who thinks he is in control, but finds out the hard way that he is not, is Walton’s way of raising questions. A primary question is this: will science allow us to conquer nature and become godlike—the ideology of Progress—or are we harnessing forces we cannot control that will ultimately destroy us? “What I’m aiming at is not a depiction of the myth,” Walton notes, “but the drawing of a parallel; a sort of commentary upon what is seen whereby a glorious, radiant image is implanted with the germ of an epic tragedy.”
12 x 24 inches
The subject matter of a traditional still-life painting—a pear and some grapes—hovers lusciously in the center of Walton’s The Joker Wins Again, only to be ignored by its population of plastic figures. On the right a trio of Disney princesses inspect one of Picasso’s Femmes De Algiers canvases: the one that recently sold for over $179 million. As the toy ladies ooh and ahh over a modernist harem scene (how progressive is that?) a flock of toy helicopters drop torrents of cash on a deflating globe while two out of three superheroes look on 2
helplessly. Superman looks away—he at least has the resolve to avert his attention—while the Joker closes the deal.
Et in Arcadia Nos
Phaethon
oil on linen
36 x 36 inches
oil on linen
36 x 48 inches
The poignancy of life’s transience shades the figures of Et in Arcadia Nos, a major work that Walton has been developing over the span of
many years. It actually began as a painting of his partner Jane before their children were born: their first two “found their places” as the canvas developed, but he never managed to squeeze in the third. “We sometimes joke that she is the gorilla.” Set in a stage-like space that puts the family on display in a kind of natural history diorama, Walton’s Arcadia generates a personal and nervous familial image of perpetual innocence, shaded by mortality. The gorilla that appears in Et in Arcadia Nos adds the element of an endangered but related species and adds an elegiac tone to the composition. It’s a painting that constructs a walled-off “Golden Age” to symbolize the fate of humanity. One might argue that, in terms of affluence and life-expectancy, humans have never had it so good: if any time can be called a Golden Age surely it is ours. But our affluence has also bred a childlike optimism, a disconnection from the harsher facts of life and the harder lessons of history. Ignoring these, we sow the seeds of our own destruction. Interestingly, Walton says that despite—or perhaps even because of—the uncompromising messages in his work, people seem more interested in it than ever. Because of his ability to generate dramas of ideas, and to paint them masterfully, Walton’s paintings are hard to look away from. Opposing easy optimism, they offer a vision grounded in realism and cathartic tragedy. It is tragedy, Walton believes, that can heal us by easing the burden of our guilt.
4
Crisis Management
oil on linen
18 x 24 inches
6
The Enemies of Progress
oil on linen
18 x 36 inches
Lego Mondrian
oil on linen
10 x 14 inches
7
8
The Joker Wins Again
oil on linen
12 x 24 inches
10
An Ape’s Limbs Compared to Man’s
oil on linen
48 x 96 inches
An Ape’s Limbs Compared to Man’s This painting is based on an illustration in an old book on primates comparing the proportions of a human and a gibbon. The illustration intrigued me because it was based on the image of Vitruvian Man made famous by Leonardo, in which man’s beauty and perfection of form are demonstrated by him fitting, arms outstretched, within a perfect square. The poor gibbon is obviously deficient within this scheme of values, and with his legs dangling, resembles a crucified martyr. The illustration seemed to express unintentionally something strange and dysfunctional in our relationship with nature. I decided to try and fulfill the iconographic potential of the image by translating it into a dramatically lit three-dimensional space, a sort of Last-Judgement scene in which, instead of human souls, animals are weighed and measured and man appears god-like, glorified. In the background the evolution of ape to man progresses toward an unknown future. By overlaying the iconography of science and progress upon older traditions of Christian and classical humanistic iconography, the picture condenses many of the central themes of western civilization. The resulting picture is like a super-history-painting which parodies Christianity, Humanism, and Scientism without, I think, endorsing any of them. I think this reflects my own ambivalence about much of our cultural heritage and likely destiny. The people in the painting are not really free agents: they enact roles not of their choosing but dictated by my iconographic scheme. However, as realistic, sensitive portraits - mostly of friends and family - I think they help to counterbalance the abstractness of the ‘big picture’ themes (Man, Nature, Science, Destiny) with more immediate human values. In its composition, rich colours and dramatic light, the picture recalls HighRenaissance religious and narrative painting. I also looked to Last Judgement scenes or ‘Dooms’ often found over the western doorway in Gothic cathedrals, where Christ ‘in glory’ is depicted centrally while below him angels weigh the souls of the dead, separating the righteous from the damned. The imaginary space was inspired by Courbet’s Atelier in the Musée D’Orsay in which he depicted himself at his easel in a vast urban studio, surrounded by friends and enemies. I was also thinking of Gauguin’s great painting, ‘What Are We, Where Do We Come From, Where Are We Going?’ and wanted to paint a picture that might live up to the ambition of his title. — Conor Walton
The Optimists
oil on linen mounted on panel
12 x 20 inches
Opposite Page: Sic Transit Gloria Mundi oil on linen 12 x 16 inches 13
Opposite Page: Telescope oil on linen 27 x 36 inches
Puzzles
oil on linen
12 x 22 inches
15
16
Megaloceros Giganteus
oil on linen
36 x 72 inches
Monkey Painting
oil on canvas
16 x 32 inches
17
18
Unbeatable
oil on linen
24 x 48 inches
Fat Tails
oil on linen
12 x 39 inches
19
20
Black Hole
oil on linen
18 x 27 inches
Keeping Things in Perspective
oil on linen
20 x 24 inches
21
22
The Crusaders Entering Constantinople
oil on linen
18 x 30 inches
23
24
One Giant Leap
oil on linen
18 x 12 inches
It ’s Not Easy Being Green
oil on canvas
16 x 20 inches
25
26
Phaethon
oil on linen
36 x 36 inches
The Lesson At the center of this painting is an illustration in a book showing how the path of projectiles launched from an earth-like body is affected by their speed and by the force of gravity. It’s the sort of illustration that one often finds in books on physics and space flight; the earliest version is found in Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica (1687). It’s the sort of illustration that has fascinated me since childhood, condensing so many concepts into a few lines - matter, space, energy, force, the bounded and the unbounded - that it’s like a little ideogram of the universe. One might also take it as embodying the Faustian aspect of western civilisation: its belief in matter, force and energy; its claims to mastery of nature; a will-to-power that recognises no limits, dreaming even of the ‘conquest of space’. My painting is really an elaboration of these ideas. I sought to create in the figure holding the book a worthy exponent of the ideas contained within it, and a deep space behind the figure that renders viscerally what is only implied by the illustration. — Conor Walton
The Lesson
oil on linen
48 x 36 inches
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Et in Arcadia Nos
I remember a friend bursting into tears at the sight of her sister in one of my paintings. Transformed by my Old-Masterish style, her sister’s image seemed
‘Et in Arcadia Nos’ is a family portrait among other things. I actually started
to be lifted out of the present, to belong to the past, as if she was already
painting my partner Jane in before any of our children had arrived; the boys
lost. Seen for the first time, the painting seemed like a premonition of death, a
slowly found their places in the picture as it evolved, but by the time our
momento mori.
youngest child came along I had run out of space. We sometimes joke that she’s the gorilla.
‘Et in Arcadia Nos’ is a sort of family memorial, anticipating our deaths, perhaps even our extinction as a species. It presents an image of a more harmonious
The title (‘We too are in Arcady’) is a reworking of ‘Et in Arcadia Ego’, the name
relationship with Nature, but it’s not intended to be a very realistic one. It’s
of Poussin’s famous painting: ‘I too am in Arcady’ (the ‘I’ referring to Death).
more like a repository of transient pleasures and loves; of unfulfilled hopes and
Changing the ‘I’ to ‘We’ in my picture underlines its family aspect, but it is also
dreams. It shows how we would have liked to have lived, but failed. Somehow
intended to draw viewers into the painting’s world, to implicate them in its
the nostalgic, regretful, elegiac sensibility that goes with this type of painting
situation.
seems entirely appropriate.
Arcadia stands for a mythical golden age of humanity, a paradise in which nature
— Conor Walton
was so abundant and life so simple that there was no need for intelligence or foresight. The Arcadians thus lived in a state of childlike innocence; a perpetual present, without fear, unaware even of their own mortality. In Poussin’s painting some Arcadians have come across a tomb and, deciphering it’s motto, for the first time comprehend their fate. One might argue that, in terms of affluence and life-expectancy, humans have never had it so good: if any time can be called a Golden Age surely it is ours. But our affluence has also bred a childlike optimism, a disconnection from the harsher facts of life and the harder lessons of history. Ignoring these, we sow the seeds of our own destruction. Project figures for CO2 emissions, natural resource consumption, habitat loss and extinction of species into the future, the numbers seem to anticipate a vast tragedy: ”I too am in these numbers.”
Opposite Page: Et in Arcadia Nos oil on linen 36 x 48 inches
Nicholas Poussin Et in Arcadia Ego oil on linen 1637–1638 29
Opposite Page: Business as Usual oil on linen mounted on panel 36 x 48 inches
Self Portrait
oil on linen
16 x 12 inches 31
32
Venus Hibernica
oil on linen
30 x 60 inches
Burning The idea for this image originated in a project to paint personifications of the classical elements. The element of fire was the only one that rather literally took legs and ran. Doing justice to the subject has become an obsession, leading me through several versions; standing to begin with, but becoming ever-more dynamic. I’ve come to see a perverse joyfulness in this figure that, in truth, I admire. Perhaps, for me, certain aspects of painting itself are bound up with his incandescence. He has to spread his flame, to set others alight. — Conor Walton
Burning
oil on linen
48 x 48 inches
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Opposite Page: Bread oil on linen 12 x 16 inches
Butter
oil on linen
9 x 12 inches
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36
Bunch of Grapes
oil on linen
12 x 9 inches
Bag of Tomatoes
oil on linen
18 x 18 inches
37
38
Bag of Oranges
oil on linen
16 x 16 inches
Water
oil on linen
12 x 9 inches
39
40
Bunch of Grapes
oil on canvas
14 x 10 inches
Wine
oil on linen
12 x 8 inches
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42
Chocolate
oil on linen
10 x 12 inches
Honey
oil on linen
8 x 6 inches
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44
Pears
oil on linen
10 x 12 inches
Spring
oil on linen
18 x 8 inches
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Conor Wal ton: Contempla t ing Higher T hing s by John Seed
Conor Walton, one of Ireland’s leading representational painters, strives to create paintings that go beyond mere technical competence. One of his stated goals is to endow his works with high, shared ideals so that his images will carry some of the cultural importance that religious art carried in earlier eras. I recently interviewed Walton and asked him about his background ideas and interests. Tell me a bit about your childhood: were you always an artist? No! I was an astronaut, a commando and a zoologist first, as far as I remember. But I always drew pictures. I probably spent most of my childhood lying on the floor drawing and painting. I was quite shy and a bit of a loner. Drawing allowed me to escape into a world of my own making. But it was also my primary means of relating to the real world. I built my world out of pictures. Was Ireland a good place to receive artistic training? Tell me about your studies in Ireland and also in Italy. The Ireland I grew up in was still a very traditional, conservative, Catholic country. It was largely untouched by the destruction and upheavals of the two World Wars that completely changed the cultural landscape 46
in the rest of Europe. The teaching in the art colleges was very conservative up until the late sixties, when there was a sort of Cultural Revolution and the Modernists burst in and started shaking things up. As a result, when I went to NCAD in 1989, there were still some ‘Ancien Regime’ teachers left who were trying to teach painting as a craft according to “academic” principles. But there were also Abstractionists, NeoExpressionists, Pop Artists, Postmodernists and Conceptualists. All the major strands of twentieth-century art were represented by the teaching staff when I was there. They all seemed to secretly despise each other, and disagreed in their teaching about absolutely everything, and I found the whole experience extremely disorientating, but I think I learned a lot, from all of them in different ways. In terms of the cultural power-politics of the time, the ‘academics’ and ‘traditionalists’ were a waning force, but they were still there. They are gone now. My time in Italy was in many ways the opposite experience. When I studied painting in Dublin, my interest in the craft and tradition of painting was seen as deeply reactionary. I was denounced for painting ‘salon pictures’, for producing a sort of wanna-be authoritarian or fascist art. But when I went to study with Charles Cecil in Florence, I was made to feel like an apostate of tradition - a Modernist! A Relativist! Charles avowedly hated the Twentieth Century, and his teaching seemed
designed to produce a sort of simulacrum of the art of an earlier age, in which all evidence of Modernity, of NOW, was to be ruthlessly repressed. I thought this was utterly pointless, and I ended up having as many arguments with Charles as I had with the Modernists back in Dublin. In fact they were even more bitter. I was almost banned from Charles’ studio. The only thing that kept me in was that I knew my art history. Charles had a great way of quoting Leonardo, or Rubens, or Joshua Reynolds, like they were still alive and he’d just been talking with them over a drink in the bar next door. I’d studied all the sources he was quoting, and could answer back, and even correct him occasionally. Even while this annoyed him and challenged him, it thrilled him. No-one else answered Charles back. So he never kicked me out. And I did learn a lot from him, though not always what he wanted to teach me. I even respect the depth of his hatred for Modernity. I’ve absorbed it in my own way. You have a degree in Art History: when did you make the switch and make painting your main priority? Painting was always my main priority. But NCAD ran a joint honours degree in art history, and those with brains to spare were encouraged to sign up and get two degrees for the price of one. At the time, hardly anyone in Ireland was making a living from art; you were expected to support yourself principally
by teaching when you left college. Because my work aroused the hostility of the Modernists I was constantly in danger of crashing out of the painting department, and I couldn’t see myself getting a teaching position there in the face of such opposition, so teaching art history seemed like a reasonable alternative. I was even allowed to write my thesis on abstract art and received a prize for it, despite my saying things in the thesis that were highly critical of the whole notion of abstract art. It seemed to me that art history was still a true ‘academic’ discipline with objective standards, whereas in the painting department any notion of academic discipline and objectivity had collapsed. But the art history department in my art college was unusually liberal. When I went on to do a masters in art history in England intending, again, to focus on Modernist art from a highly critical perspective, I found my path blocked. I found that the specialists in Modernism I sought out to supervise my thesis wouldn’t even entertain my ideas and refused to cooperate. Their hostility showed me that art history isn’t such an objective discipline after all! Basically, those who make their academic careers out of studying an artist or movement become cheerleaders for their subject. They can become so wedded to the values and narrative on which the high reputation of their subject depends that they won’t see them challenged. This is why the broad history of art in the twentieth century has become such a conventional, well-established orthodoxy. So I ended up doing my thesis on an episode in seventeenth-century cultural politics called
“The Battle of the Ancients and the Moderns”. I was still attacking the precepts of Modernism, but this time from behind! Which was fine. My supervisor said it was one of the best dissertations in the history of the department, and I was awarded my degree with Distinction.
cultural utility. But all these vested interests hide behind the common lie that, in matters of Art, good judgement is disinterested. And in this painting I’ve tried to make an image that articulates some of my feelings about the subject.
In the end I found I didn’t need to teach art history; I could earn a living from painting. But I owe a great deal to those studies. A grasp of past styles, iconography, symbolism has enriched my work in pretty obvious ways. But the drive behind my inquiry was my sense of cultural disorientation. Why did I feel so at odds with the ideas that were being taught at art college? Why did I find it so hard to admire or even respect so much contemporary art? These were puzzles that I could only solve by a period of intense study and deep reflection. And this was what I achieved while (supposedly) studying art history. So I managed to reorientate myself, and my worldview gained depth and maturity. You have a feeling for allegory. Tell me about one of your allegorical paintings. My Still life with Judgement is an allegory of aesthetic judgement. Modern notions of aesthetic judgement are derived from Immanuel Kant, whose Critique of Judgement is one of the books in the painting. The basic idea is that Art affords us an extremely pure pleasure, unmixed by any self-interest, because Art is useless. Now this idea is total crap. Art is extremely useful. Those who make a big deal about it demonstrate their refinement, their class and (if they have it) their wealth for all to see. It has huge social and
Still life with Judgement XI oil on linen 24 x 18 inches Private Collection
The old Krups weighing scales performs two functions in the painting. With a cast of a human face atop, it becomes a metaphor for the coldly calculating brain behind the face -- backed up by books of art theory, history and criticism -- weighing, measuring, judging ‘disinterestedly’. The face is turned resolutely 47
away from the earth and the fruity pleasures at the base, contemplating ‘higher’ things. But the face on the scales also invokes the symbolism of the Last Judgement and Weighing of Souls. So maybe the ‘disinterested’ aesthetic judge is also up for judgement. These echoes of Christian iconography also help to amplify the religious, apocalyptic feel of the picture, making it akin to a sacrificial alter or shrine. The fruit at the base are a sort of natural, earthy counterpoint to the strange, artificial construction above. Painted with the brightest, purest colours and most alluring textures I can muster, I want the whole picture to appeal to your sense of touch, to your appetites, to your fascination with illusions, to your covetousness, to every pleasure which is physical, earthy and NOT disinterested. Overall, I hope the painting maintains a sort of equilibrium between the elements. Although I intend my paintings to honour Nature and appeal frankly to the senses, to pleasure and passion, in my demand for rigorous formal order and intellectual content, I know I’m also inside this painting’s coolly calculating intellect. What is it about the still life genre that interests you? Ceci n’est pas une Blague
To begin with I was not really interested in the genre: my principal interest has always been painting people and ‘living nature’ rather than ‘nature mort’, but live models are expensive and I paint slowly, and still life seemed like a good way of producing small saleable works that I could paint from life and develop my eye and technique at the same time. But the deadness of objects, their lack 48
oil on linen
of energy or any psychological presence has always been an obstacle to me, something to overcome. I’m not at all happy with still life as an exercise in pure objectivity or pure form. So I end up trying to treat the painting as a miniature drama, a microcosm. I use objects that have meaning for me and try to get the whole painting to make a statement,
24 x 30 inches
Private Collection
to express an attitude. And because still life is an art of objects -- of deadness -- attitudes like objectivity, materialism, fatalism, nihilism, are easily accessible through the genre. It’s a battleground for me: a way of waging smallscale war against modernity. Illusionism still has great artistic potential
I like to read. I’m interested in philosophy and history and science. More recently, in order to fathom how our crazy world really works, I’ve taken to reading books on economics and scanning the financial papers. But these days, raising my three young children is my main interest when I’m not painting. My eldest beats me at chess now, so things are getting very interesting indeed!
Originally published September 1st, 2014
It ’s the End of the World as We Know It
oil on canvas
because reality is still something we find difficult and threatening. I’ve heard it said that people can avoid facing reality, but they can’t avoid the consequences of not facing reality. I think my work is very much bound up with these issues; with naturalism at one remove, with fantasy and disillusionment. In our culture, to an historically unprecedented extent, affluence and industrial might have become weapons in a general war against reality, against nature. But Nature’s still going to win. I suppose fundamentally I think of myself as at odds with the still life genre and most of its ‘default settings’. But in some ways it’s a good position to be in: everything I do in still life is done tactically, strategically, self-consciously; my dissatisfaction with and to some extent
11 3/4 x 24 inches
Private Collection
contempt for the genre is what allows me to push it around, to use it purely as a means to my ends. Every once-in-a-while I get very frustrated with painting objects and feel like I’m close to exhausting its possibilities for me, but it usually doesn’t last long. Right now I’m flying along. It’s a great time to be a cultural pessimist!
in
the
Huffington
Post,
John Seed is a professor of art and art history at Mt. San Jacinto College in Southern California. Seed has written about art and artists for Arts of Asia, Art Ltd., Catamaran, Harvard Magazine, International Artist, The HuffingtonPost, Hyperallergic, and Poets and Artists. An archive of his writings can be found at www.johnseed.com
What are your interests outside of art? Any chance I get -- which is not too often these days -- I try to get some time in the wilderness, in something approximating Nature. I’m lucky to be living beside the sea, with long cliff walks nearby, and near the Wicklow mountains, where you can go off-track and not meet another soul for a day if you want to. 49
2013
Elements, Beaux Arts Bath, UK
2012
Allegories of Painting, Dunamaise Arts Centre, Ireland
2012
Allegories of Painting, Galleri PAN, Oslo, Norway
2011
Allegories of Painting, Galleri Nexus, Denmark
2010
New Paintings, Beaux Arts Bath, UK
2009
Landscape and Still Life, Jorgensen Fine Art, Ireland
2006
Philosophical Paintings, Jorgensen Fine Art, Ireland
2003
New Work, Jorgensen Fine Art, Ireland
2003
Shelter Portraits, Jorgensen Fine Art, Ireland
1999
Conor Walton, Jorgensen Fine Art, Ireland
Selected Group Exhibitions 1970
Born in Dublin, Ireland
2015
1993
BA (Joint Honours Degree in the History of Art and Fine Art), NCAD, Dublin
Beaux Arts Bath @ The Affordable Art Fair, London
1995
MA in Art History and Theory, University of Essex, UK (awarded with distinction)
RHA Annual Exhibition, RHA Gallagher Gallery, Dublin
1995-6 Studied painting and old-master techniques in Florence, Italy, with Charles H. Cecil
Wexford Opera Festival Exhibition, Greenacres Gallery, Wexford.
Awards Third Prize, Still Life Category, International ARC Salon (2014-2015)
Galerie L‘Oeil du Prince @ ST-ART Art Fair, Strasbourg, France.
Finalist and sitter‘s choice, Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year 2014, Dublin heat.
2014
Portrait Ireland 2005 Major Award, Newtownbarry House Gallery (2005)
Beaux Arts Bath @ The Affordable Art Fair, London
Shortlisted, BP Portrait Award, National Portrait Gallery, London (2005)
RHA Annual Exhibition, RHA Gallagher Gallery, Dublin
Third Prize `Lorenzo Il Magnifico‘ for Painting, Florence Biennale (1999)
Dublin Biennial 2014, CHQ Building, Dublin.
Don Niccolo D‘Ardia Caracciolo RHA Medal (1997)
Objects of Beauty, CK Contemporary, San Francisco USA.
Keating McLoughlin Medal awarded by the ESB at RHA Annual Exhibition (1997)
Peppercanister Gallery @ VUE Art Fair, Dublin
Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, Montreal, Canada, Scholarship (1994)
Winter Exhibition, The Biscuit Factory, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.
Royal Dublin Society Taylor Art Bequest, First Prize (1993)
50
Boyle Arts Festival, Co. Roscommon, Ireland
2013
Solo Exhibitions
Janus, Peppercanister Gallery, Dublin.
2015
The Enemies of Progress, CK Contemporary, San Francisco, USA
Beaux Arts Bath @ The Affordable Art Fair, London
2015
La Figure Humaine, Galerie L’Oeil du Prince, Paris, France
The Boyle Arts Festival, Boyle, Co. Roscommon.
2013
Vanitas, Peppercanister Gallery, Dublin, Ireland
RHA Annual Exhibition, RHA Gallagher Gallery, Dublin.
The Art of Sublimity, Aughrim Arts Festival, Ireland.
The Boyle Arts Festival, Boyle, Co. Roscommon
Galerie L‘Oeil du Prince, Paris, France.
Kitch Biennale 2010, Palazzo Cini Gallery, Venice, Italy.
Wexford Opera Festival Exhibition, Greenacres Gallery, Wexford.
Julesalong, Gallery Pan, Oslo, Norway.
2012
Christmas Exhibition, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, UK.
Christmas Exhibition, Peppercanister Gallery, Dublin.
2009
CK Contemporary at the Miami Art Fair, Miami Beach, USA.
Best of BP Portrait Painters, The A Gallery, London.
Wexford Opera Festival Exhibition, Greenacres Gallery, Wexford.
Mick O’Dea Selects, Lavit Gallery, Cork.
Travelling Exhibition, Galleri PAN, Geilo & Stavanger, Norway.
CASe, Lavit Gallery, Cork.
Group Exhibition, Windsor Fine Art, New Orleans, USA.
RHA Annual Exhibition, RHA Gallagher Gallery, Dublin.
Dublin Biennial, Point Village, Dublin.
The Boyle Arts Festival, Boyle, Co. Roscommon.
Group Exhibition, CK Contemporary, San Francisco, USA.
Summer Exhibition, Newtownbarry House Gallery, Wexford.
Apokalips, Grattacielo Pirelli, Milan, Italy.
Wexford Opera Festival Exhibition, Greenacres Gallery, Wexford.
Postcards from a Small Island, Beaux Arts Bath, Avon, UK.
Christmas Exhibition, Beaux Arts Bath, Avon, UK.
12 X 4, Gormleys, Belfast.
Christmas Exhibition, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, UK.
RHA Annual Exhibition, RHA Gallagher Gallery, Dublin. Beaux Arts Bath @ The Affordable Art Fair, London
2008 Spring Exhibition, Jorgensen Fine Art (also 1997, 1998, 2004, 2005, 2007).
2011
Kitch Biennale 2008, Pasinger Fabrik, Munich, Germany.
La Situazione, Spazio Giuccardini, Milan, Italy.
Summer Exhibition, Jorgensen Fine Art (also 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2004).
The Boyle Arts Festival, Boyle, Co. Roscommon.
Summer Exhibition, Newtownbarry House Gallery, Wexford.
Nude – Blatant Exhibitionism, Kenny Gallery, Galway.
CASe, Lavit Gallery, Cork.
Level, Dunamaise Arts Centre, Portlaoise.
Christmas Exhibition, Beaux Arts Bath, Avon, UK.
Life Room, Bourn Vincent Gallery, University College Limerick. RHA Annual Exhibition, RHA Gallagher Gallery, Dublin Beaux Arts Bath @ The Affordable Art Fair, London
2007 Christmas Exhibition, Jorgensen Fine Art (also 1999, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2005). Group Exhibition, Killarney Art Gallery.
2010
RHA Annual Exhibition, RHA Gallagher Gallery, Dublin.
The Myth of the True, Palazzo Litta, Milan, Italy.
Summer Exhibition, Mellerstain House, Berwickshire, UK.
The Guardians of the Spirit, Castello di San Leo, Italy.
Artists of Fame and Promise, Beaux Arts Bath, Avon, UK.
30th Anniversary Exhibition, Beaux Arts Bath, Avon, UK.
New Realism, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, UK.
Level, Dunamaise Arts Centre, Portlaoise. 51
2006
Limerick), The Office of Public Works, An Post, The Royal Dublin Society, St Patrick‘s Cathedral
Highlights of the Taylor Art Prize, 1878 – 2005, National Gallery of Ireland.
(Dublin), St Patrick‘s College Cavan, Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin
Mirror Image, Artonomy, Cornwall, UK.
Conor’s commissioned portraits can be found in many public and private collections, and his work has featured on book covers and postage stamps in Ireland and abroad.
2005 Portrait Ireland 2005, Newtownbarry House Gallery, Wexford. The Boyle Arts Festival, Boyle, Co. Roscommon. RHA Annual Exhibition, RHA Gallagher Gallery, Dublin. BP Portrait Award 2005, National Portrait Gallery, London, UK.
Conor Walton, ‘The Enemies of Progress’, Artists on Art Magazine, Fall edition, 2015
The Irish Show, Wykeham Gallery, Hampshire, UK
Conor Walton, ‘The Painter as Medium’, Artists on Art Magazine, Fall edition, 2014 ‘Contemplating Higher Things’ Interview with John Seed, Huffington Post (USA edition), 1 September 2014.
2004 RHA Banquet Show, RHA Gallagher Gallery, Dublin (also 1997). The Boyle Arts Festival, Boyle, Co. Roscommon. RHA Annual Exhibition, RHA Gallagher Gallery, Dublin. Additions 2004, National Self Portrait Collection, University of Limerick
‘Access to Incandescence’, Interview with Andres Orlowski, Combustus Magazine, 23 May 2014. Niall MacMonagle, ‘Black Hole’, Sunday Independent, 24 November 2013. “This is a great time to be a cultural pessimist”, Interview with Conor Walton, Penduline Press, 15 June 2013. Jane Humphries, ‘Elements’, Irish Arts Review, Winter edition 2012/13 Conor Walton ‘Under Wraps’, Artists & Illustrators, London, October 2012
2001
RHA Annual Exhibition, RHA Gallagher Gallery, Dublin.
Conor Walton, ‘Paintologically Speaking’, The Painting Imperative, Autumn edition 2012
2000
Florence Biennale in Dublin, Ashford Gallery, Dublin
Sarah E. Fensom, ‘Contemporary Still Life’, Art & Antiques, New York, October 2011
1999
Florence Biennale, Fortezza da Basso, Firenze, Italy.
Lise-Lotte Blom, ‘Conor Walton – en fascinerende irsk maler’, Kunstavisen, 21 October 2011 (Danish)
1998
RHA Annual Exhibition, RHA Gallagher Gallery, Dublin.
Kjeld Thomsen, ‘Alt und Neu, Neu Verpackt: Irischer Künstler in der Uker Galerie’, Der Nordschleswiger, 1
1997
RHA Annual Exhibition, RHA Gallagher Gallery, Dublin.
October 2011 (German)
1996
Two Touches, Three Tastes, Ormond Gallery, Dublin.
Jana Koroczynsky, ‘Conor Walton’, Kultura, 25 November 2010 (Polish)
NCAD Drawing 250, RHA Gallagher Gallery, Dublin.
Paolo Lesino, ‘Lo Spirito del Guardiano’, ‘I Guardiani dello Spirito’, Milan, 2010 (Italian)
Oireachtas Exhibition, Guinness Hops Store, Dublin (also 1994).
Barry Egan, ‘I’d rather be up a mountain than in the museums’, Sunday Independent, 8 March 2009
Taylor Exhibition, RDS, Ballsbridge, Dublin.
Martin Murphy, ‘Irish Artist Reinvigorates Vanitas Genre’, Epoch Times, New York, 26 February 2009
1993
NCAD Degree Show, RHA Gallagher Gallery, Dublin.
Public Collections Archdiocese of Dublin, the Boyle Civic Collection, Club na Muinteoirí, Dublin Dental Hospital, the Electricity Supply Board, the Humanist Association of Ireland, the Irish Defence Forces, Maynooth College, the National Library of Ireland, the National Self-Portrait Collection (University of 52
Select Bibliography
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