`Everybody loves this painter," said the American poet Tess Gallagher when launching Bogland & Shoreline Sligo, Sean McSweeney's dazzling new exhibition at the Taylor Galleries in Dublin on Thursday night. Viewers jostled for space, and snatches of overheard conversation confirmed the opinion that yet again, McSweeney has produced work that is both daring and delicate, multi-layered variations of themes inspired by the Sligo landscape he lives and works in. Poets Ciaran Carson and Michael O'Siadhail and painters Anne Madden, Louis le Brocquy and Patrick Pye were present. O'Siadhail celebrated a recent literary award by buying a painting. Gallagher, a native of the American Pacific northwest, has been coming to Ireland's north-west since 1968, "I come from timber country, bogs are a new thing to me. Like the rainforests, we are using up this amenity. Those who have never seen a bog may come to see the beauty of these wonderful places through Sean McSweeney's beautiful paintings."
It was another poet, Dermot Healy, who first introduced Gallagher to McSweeney's paintings. She referred to a remark made by the Mexican poet Octavio Paz, who pointed out that realism and the "whole idea of what reality is a very recent notion". McSweeney's work evokes magic and the mysterious, she said, and quoted her late husband, the writer Raymond Carver, who said storytelling was a form of carrying the news. "Sean McSweeney lives in the real business of painting. Freedom is a word he uses a lot," she observed. Praising the sensual, tactile exuberance of his work she said "I like the austerity, the toughness, the acidic gleam and the generative sizzle." The exhibition is almost entirely sold out - and must be seen before it ends on October 31st. The painter, whose work is currently also on show in Salzburg with paintings by Charles Tyrell, looked pleased - it had been two years of work. "My studio is empty. Now I can start all over again."
