About Tony Lawless Art
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A LITTLE ABOUT ME....
After refusing a place in NCAD, I worked for over 30 years in Finance - always painting a little, but not as much as I'd like. Feeling the right side of my brain atrophy, and the left swell like a balloon, I decided to leave work, get a studio and try to get both halves back into balance.
I now work in my studio in Clontarf at the end of a garden I share with Olive, Ben, Charlie and Peanut. The family are generally happy to get a break from me, but Peanut pops in regularly - usually at inopportune times and to stand on the canvases.
I'm happy to say the left side of my brain has now shrunk, and I generally need a calculator to add anything over two digits.
MY COAST LINE
I've lived in Clontarf for about 20 years now - 15 of them in a house facing the wooden bridge that leads onto Dollymount Strand, which is where my obsession with sea, marshes, horizon and sky must have started.
My work is generally non representational, but is often inspired by the interplay between the sea as it comes in creating little wading pools for the birds, and the marshes as they rise up again, creating little islands in the seawater.
You'll regularly see me stopping the bike to take a photo of the morning sun hitting the shore, or a rivulet that wasn't there five minutes before.
Really I should get a life.
MY PROCESS
My process is hard to pin down and it's evolving.
It started with Oils and was very figurative, then the previous collection moved into acrylics, inks and oils. For this collection, a lot of them started as either screen prints or acrylic paintings then overpainted using oils and cold wax and inks.
I've moved away from using brushes, so a lot of the effects are created with layers of overpainting with rollers, palette knife or rubber squeegees, with brushes used mainly to splash either paint or solvent, to add or remove colour.
Hopefully it creates interesting textures and a feeling of depth.
It certainly creates a mess.