at Origin from 11th May 2018
opening by Psychiatrist Dr. Richard Blennerhassett

Could this young Irish artist be our Kusama?

Yayoi Kusama became the most expensive living female artist of all time with a $7.3 million sale of a painting called ‘White 28’ in 2014 by Christie’s.

89-year-old Japanese artist Kusama, pictured below, was an influential figure in the post-war New York art scene, staging provocative happenings and exhibiting works such as her “infinity nets”, hallucinatory paintings of loops and dots (and physical representations of the idea of infinity). Now, according to Dr. Noelle Campbell-Sharp founder of the Cill Rialaig Artists Retreat, we may have our own Kusama.

In 2015, Yayoi Kusama’s worldwide retrospective drew such attention in Mexico City

that extra security had to assist with the crowds and her frequent collaborations with luxury brands such as Louis Vuitton means she is never far away from the public eye. Kusama is widely known for her mesmerizing dot paintings, which she creates via an obsessive process of concentration.
Campbell-Sharp believes that a young artist from Lucan, Dónal Geheran, who shares the same obsessions as Kusama is not (as he has been described) an ‘outsider artist’. She believes that like Kusama he can be more properly described as an ‘insider artist’. By painting as if by osmosis and reacting to his state of mind he is demonstrating to us a positive if a somewhat energetic picture of ‘another intelligence’.

By bringing him to Cill Rialaig Retreat numerous times in the last several years – she thought ‘earthing’ him in such a sanctuary or space where observation led more easily to application helped by the sheer absence of noise and technological interference. The ‘inwardness and silence’ that artist Agnes Martin described was there experienced along with the freedom from the cares of the world. Like Kusama, who states she suffers from OCD but not ‘manic-depressive psychosis’, Donal’s art should not be confused with a disability but rather with ‘ability’ of a new order.

Visual artists like Andy Warhol, Agnes Martin, Michaelangelo, and Van Gogh as well as famous musicians such as Brian Wilson and Syd Barrett would have had similar conditions.

Of his frequent stay in the Cill Rialaig Artists Retreat Geheran says;
“What Cill Rialaig did for me was reveal the similarity of Nature’s marks, rain causing repetitive ripples in potholes full of water or the striations the wind makes over centuries on the standing stones or rocks on Bolus Head. I found comfort in looking out at the ocean and seeing the hand of Nature drawing repetitiously on the sea until it came to shore”.

26 Year old Dónal Geheran whose exhibition DG008 at The Origin Gallery will be opened by Dr. Richard Blennerhassett, Clinical Director ofSaint John of Gods Hospital, promises to bring avid attention from the most serious of Irish art collectors.

Dónal Geheran, DG019

Dónal Geheran, DG0024