Charles Tyrrell studied fine art at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin. He is considered by many to be one of Ireland's leading painters.His characteristic style - an animated lyrical abstraction, underpinned by geometric structures - developed in the early seventies. Post-war American painting, in particular the work of Morris Louis and Richard Diebenkorn, was a strong influence. When he moved from Dublin to West Cork in the early eighties, some of his paintings took on landscape overtones. He does not work directly from the landscape however. Later in the eighties, oils began to supplant acrylics, and the paintings, though abstract, seemed increasingly organic.He started the Borderland series in the late eighties. His initial interest was in the border or frame within the picture, and the energy of Borderland XIX comes partly from his negotiation of the relationship between the shifting borders and the central circle. As the series progressed, Tyrrell became preoccupied with the changing borders of mainland Europe, and saw an analogy between this and his own exploration of the formal borders of the picture.Tyrrell himself has said that, at the core of his work,

"...there is a constant battle or state of flux between the order of the imposed geometrical structure and the demands of an emerging painting that might not wish to conform to this structure. The geometric structure is usually a constant, with the same basic divisions running through a series of paintings. The starting point is a geometric configuration within which I know a painting will be allowed to develop. There can, of course, be a great deal of fluidity within the structure, and, as the picture develops, alignments between the different sections can shift and change. Orders might break down altogether, so that the final painting may bear little relation to its earlier manifestations. This chopping and changing that takes place is at the very heart of the developing painting, and I find it is the part which excites me most; when a painting gains a momentum of its own, and my idea of where it should be going is vetoed by the charged and mysterious thrust of the painting itself ... I need the painting to have some autonomy from me, to develop on its own ... It is a journey into the unknown. Nevertheless, it must be a journey over which I have some control. I don't think painting can be just some sort of primal scream".

[VR]


Lit. - Kelly, 1987 / O'Regan, 1994 / Walker, 1994