SEAN Sully, at this relatively late stage, obviously needs no introduction here exhibitions in Dublin, Kilkenny. etc have made his work and style familiar in this country, he has been interviewed on various occasions, and good, authoritative books on his painting are easily available. All of which, however, should add to the interest in his large exhibition at IMMA, rather than subtract from it (he is also, of course, represented in one of the Irish group exhibitions in Paris, though barely adequately).

Only paintings are included the artist apparently made a rather late decision against showing his graphic work as well, for a number of cogent reasons. This means that we cannot view Scully's pastels, which are among his subtlest and most personal works, nor the early, quasi geometric gouaches, nor his drawings. He is probably right in his decision the weighty, imposing, almost brutal paintings which have become identified as "Scully style" stand on their own, and on their own monumental scale. They cover 20 years (1976-95) and so more or less represent Scully's full maturity as a painter (he was born in 1945).

He is, of course, Dublin born and London educated, but stylistically and in most other respects too he belongs to the New York School, and these works all from after his move to America. The make it big ethos of New York has been responsible for much pictorial rhetoric, even bathos, but Scully's pictures fully justify their grandiose scale. His admiration for Rothko is well known, he belongs to a generations which was influenced by the example of Barnett Newman, he had early contacts with Sol LeWitt and the Minimalists but is not in sympathy with their "puritanism". One very dark toned, not fully characteristic picture is obviously close to Ad Reinhardt and Scully also admits to a considerable respect for Agnes Martin.

Since he was for a time a painter of "stripes", it is easy to link him to9 with Johns, Stella, and even Bridget Riley, but after all, this was more or less a common vocabulary of the time. Superficially at least, Scully is not a painter of fertile invention, formal or otherwise, and the signs are that this is a deliberate choice. His overall tendency probably reinforced by Minimalism is to simplify drastically, to use fairly basic shapes, such as rectangles, parallel, stripes or bands, inset square panels and to be as uncompromising and confrontational as possible. The often raw, unyielding paint surfaces enhance this.

Inside this sell imposed frame work, of course, he varies his approach greatly surfaces advance and recede, pictorial rhythms collide with a kind of edgy violence, areas of the picture threaten to break away from the rest, there is a frequent sense of formal conflict or dislocation. An underlying grid format is often there, either openly or half buried, but it is not a strait jacket and the compositions are not static.

From an interview with Scully printed in the catalogue, it emerges that some of the inset panels represent for him a kind of "window" and that the very powerful painting Four Days relates both to the title of a Bresson Film and to the idea of a time sequence. He also sees yellow as "the colour of madness", and grey, which he also uses much, has an emotional and spiritual significance.

He also, it seems, disassociates himself with the conceptual, post Duchamp tradition and views his work as "atmospheric" and expressive and with a definite spiritual dimension. There are no obvious references to anything outside painting per se, but his paintings have an innate emotional life and are never as is currently fashionable in New York just art about art. He aims high, shows his hand quite openly or even brashly, and meets the viewer head on and full frontal.

Whether or not he has achieved the abstract sublime as it used to be chilled, or hat the visionary, quasi religious dimension of Rothko, Scully certainly possesses that spacious, rugged, almost heroic quality which is a virtual monopoly of American art. And he has become a master of his craft varying his brush work with great skill and over painting in a way which produces a potent, smouldering glow in the colours. One of his greatest qualities is his understanding of "edges", which are never hard or mechanical in the old Hard Edge sense the touch is always personalised and alive.

In short, in spite of a skin deep, brutality, Scully is genuinely a painterly artist. This heavyweight exhibition makes just the kind of spectacular which IMMA needed right now.