Dublin artist Paul Hughes is known for his dynamic abstract paintings inspired by a love and exploration of colour …
Who or what was instrumental to your love of art and pursuing it as a full-time career?
I have always felt the instinctive need to make, to do, to create. I started out as a kid making clothes out of sample fabric ends and then, when recovering from injuries as a teen, I progressed to knitting massive, never-ending scarves out of wool ends. I played football obsessively at a high level for many years until serious injuries ended my career in my mid-twenties and that’s when my painting really went to another level of intensity. It became a substitute for the endless training sessions and the physicality of competitive matches. One of the greatest feelings is walking off a pitch after a match, having given everything, feeling like you’ve nothing left inside of you. My painting sessions took on this approach and fulfilled this need. I was lucky enough to have brilliant partners and supporters in the creative business we founded, so I was given the space to push my art. Up until the late ’90s, I didn’t show publicly as I just worked on private commissions and on my own development. My practice developed its own life and ramped up after some solo shows in Dublin. I was picked up by Tanya Baxter Contemporary Gallery in London, which also has branches in Hong Kong and Asia. At the time, it suited me that my art life was more focused outside of Ireland for many years as I wanted to keep the various parts of my life separate.
How has your love of colour developed?
Colour is a vehicle for learning and I love learning. Every time I’ve struggled with a colour, I’ve resolved it by diving headlong into it to learn how it reacts in different situations, environments, in different paint substance forms, how it forms relationships with other colours and how each colour only derives its impact from what is around it.
I’m relentless in my passion and pursuit of light and darkness, particularly Irish light and darkness, and how it continually changes between the land, sea and sky. In recent years, I have taken on major projects to explore both blue and green, separately. I strove to confront my own prejudices, presumptions and limitations about each colour, and forced myself to create large bodies of work using just the spectrum of each colour. I learned that I could express endless emotions and ‘scapes’ from within each specific colour field. I learned how my brushstrokes and application had the ability to virtually change a single colour.
Tell us about your new exhibition, “Green is a Myriad”, which follows on from your series, “Bastard Blue”?
In 2023, spring, summer and early autumn were warm and wet. Everything grew and kept growing, I felt. I became fascinated by the constant ‘greening’ in and around my studio in Kenmare. I started painting expressions of it and became fascinated by how it made me feel – the ‘aliveness’, the sense of ‘growing’; I began to think about what happens after growth – that is fading, dying, withering. I felt that this was like us as a people. We should be defined by our continuous desire to grow, develop, reach; to keep pushing, striving, never wanting to ripen or reach a conclusion. In broader terms, Ireland should never ‘be done’, never reach the end of the journey, never ‘arrive’. Our destiny isn’t a destination; our destiny lies in ‘what’s next’ and ‘where to’.
As a result, I discovered green is a ‘myriad’ of colours, shades, hopes and dreams. And green is beautiful because of all the greens that surround it, not in isolation. These paintings I hope are a world, a myriad of colour from one colour in all its glorious variants.
Where are you based?
I’m lucky to be able to work out of two studios in Ireland. For 20 years, I worked out of a run-down old pig barn in Blackrock, which gave me the scope to develop large-scale pieces. Interestingly, with all the holes in the roof, I also learned to incorporate mother nature into my works, whether by choice or not!
About five years ago, I moved to a bespoke studio in Dublin, where I created my own space to my own specifications and needs. In 2020, I also set up a studio space outside Kenmare. This development, and my endless staring and studying light in Kerry, has propelled me beyond where I thought possible with my work. The depth of darkness, extraordinary natural colours, ever-changing wildness and beauty, silence and solitude; the constant mingling of land, sea and skies – the multiplicity of those three elements challenge me relentlessly. And I love it.
Describe your working process …
I am instinctive and impulsive. I am a highly physical painter, so I give myself the freedom to be as expressive and forthright as I can be. Brushstrokes and mark-making are critical to me. Music envelops me; I play specific albums on a continuous loop for weeks on end as it is only after countless, endless plays do you discover rhythms, chords and magical moments. In some ways, this reflects my work. My paintings are not one night flings for people, they are not assignations; rather they are relationships, sometimes uneasy at first that build into passionate partnerships through time. They are, I believe, journeys of discovery for a viewer. They want to be stared at, to be approached and touched. They need to be loved because they are made of pure human insecurity.
What do you hope the audience will take from your Green series?
I hope they reach out and touch them. Stare at them, look at them from infinite angles, and I hope they ‘feel’ something. They are made from nothing but energy and raw emotion, and I hope people allow their own emotions to come to the fore. I don’t need or want my work to be loved or even liked, I just want it to garner a reaction. I hope, with every viewing, the paintings take on new guises and the viewers develop relationships with them.
Need to Know: “Green is a Myriad” by Paul Hughes is at Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA), Ely Place, Dublin 2. All proceeds will go to supporting the work of Unicef. www.paulhughes.ie www.rhagallery.ie
