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George Campbell RHA RUA (1917-1979) Stormy Day, C

George Campbell RHA RUA (1917-1979) Stormy Day, Connemara Oil on board, 44 x 59cm (17.25" x 23.25") Signed and dated '59 Painted in 1959. Exhibited at the Ritchie Hendriks Gallery , January 1963. 'There are', said George Campbell, 'underlying abstractions in nature if you consciously look for them and once you begin to recognise them you will see them everywhere.' He went only part of the way to abstraction, however, feeling that 'an abstract must be rich in content; it must have roots no matter how far these roots go. It must have meaning. I am bored by a few simple shapes that convey nothing to me.' Music was vitally important to Campbell, both in terms of his life and his work; he required a rhythm in painting as in everything else. His Irish landscapes display a fascination with underlying patterns and rhythms. Rocks and mountains are seen in planes of colour rather than realistically. He paints specific locations but they are analysed and reassembled, almost tessellated. The landscape is broken down and then re-presented. He was able to look at a landscape and reproduce it with all the unimportant elements eliminated. It was on the natural phenomena of the West of Ireland that he honed his craft. The bleak, desolate terrain of the west entranced him. He spoke in terms of the 'Connemara-tweed landscapes, the Donegal-tweed landscapes', the warp and weft of the landscape. In using paint intuitively he was able to recreate the sharp contrast between the rough-textured areas of rock and stonework, the soft areas of foliage and the smoother areas of sky and water. He would often speak of his delight in handling paint, 'the feel of it and the look if it'. Being self-taught, he never lost the wonder of discovery, seeing colours and textures emerge that he had not seen before. He loved dark tones and evening light. In the West of Ireland he chose to paint by paraffin-lamp feeling that the cross influences of all the shadows made for an arresting painting. In 1978, the year before his death, he recorded a three-part interview for B.B.C. Northern Ireland; its overall title was Triptych, the individual programmes being Spain, Ireland and Painting. In Triptych : Ireland he speaks of 'blacks and browns against pinks and yellows that leap at you from the painting'. It is as though he is seeing things in musical phrases, a form of substitution akin to the sensibilities of the French poet Arthur Rimbaud in his poem Larme : Then the storm changed the sky, until evening. There were black lands, lakes and poles Síle Connaughton-Deeny, March 2006