SCORCHED EARTH
PAUL MALONE
MIXED MEDIA ON PANEL:
ash, soil, burnt worrd, limestone
2016
Scorched Earth
I saw smoke in the sky over Galway, There was a large forest fire near Oughterard and the wind was sending the smoke over the city. It took years for the plants and animals to grow but a second for someone to light a match. I took photos from the distance. Ash was falling out of the sky. To my back I felt the strong prevailing winds coming in off the Atlantic feeding the fires. What took me by surprise was the speed the flames consumed the flora and fauna that lived there. I went to the same location the following day. The ground was still smoldering in places. I scraped up the burnt soil and the carbon and ash from the forest floor, I used the rust created by the cyanbacteria in the boggy soil as well as some charred peat. Out of a disaster I wanted to create something beautiful and poignant as a testament to all the life that
perished in the flames and something more fitting than an article in the local newspaper. I created my paints and created a piece that simply showed the colours and feeling of the landscape that day. The painting has the appearance of ground that suffered too much heat.
PAUL
MALONE
Paul Malone is a visual artist based in Mayo. His visual art practice utilises painting, photography and film. Erosion, magnetism, and gravity are some of the forces that shape Paul’s art. Rather than painting the landscape Paul engages directly with the environment, using found materials to create textures and pigments. He is interested in the connection between the influence of the physical forces on the environment and the seemingly unrelated process by which human thoughts are formed. In the romantic tradition of landscape painting, thoughts are disembodied. The observer is outside the environment. In
his work, by contrast, Paul sees thoughts, about the painting and about the environment that produced it, as forming patterns which are created by physical forces and chemical reactions that are rooted in the body. He likens the influence of physics on matter as being analogous to how ideas take form then influence people, events and things.
Paul is a graduate of NUI Galway and has an honors degree in Visual Communication and a Masters in Film Direction and Production. Paul is also a qualified adult educator in the creative arts sector and a published author and photographer.