Signed John Keating ’81 Purchased

John Keating (1953–)
Watercolour on paper, 33.5 x 24
Keating’s work is included in public collections in Ireland such as the NSPCI; UL and the OPW, and in private and public collections in the U.S.A., Australia, Italy, Greece and England
William Gallagher, The National Self-Portrait Collection, Vol. II, 1989 –99, Limerick 2006, pp 188–89; Evelyn Ring, ‘Irish artist picked to show his work at Monte Carlo’, Irish Examiner, 19/5/2014; Mary O’Sullivan, ‘living art of drama’, Irish Independent, 7/12/2012, downloaded from https://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/living-art-of-drama-28818223.html, 2/9/2018
Yesterday, Today, Cashel, 1981
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John Keating is a local artist, educated in Clonmel and later at the Crawford School of Art and Loughborough University. A Fulbright Scholarship enabled him to study at the Arts Students League, New York and he later attended the History of Art Diploma course at TCD. He got early encouragement from an inspiring teacher, Molly Bracken (see page ?) at his national school and at home where his father and grandfather had been known for their skill as wood-carvers. Keating is not interested in Modernism, but steeps himself in the history of western art. He works across all media and his work ranges in scale from the relatively small to the very large. Talking about his work for an exhibition at Gormley’s Fine Art Gallery, Dublin, he said, ‘It is not solely the subject matter that interests me, it is also the challenges of the medium in which I am working. The rich colours and textures of oils express something different to me than the fluent almost transparent quality of watercolour, the shades of the blackness of charcoal and graphite powder suggest something different again and the randomness of the colours and textures of mixed media have another character’. Keating won a gold medal for a painting celebrating the Olympic spirit, at the Barbican Centre in London in 2012 under the patronage of the International Olympic Committee. This led to an invitation to show at the Water Cube Cup International Painting Exhibition in Beijing, China, where he was awarded the Water Cube Cup. In addition to those venues he has had museum shows in Turin and Milan and gallery exhibitions in Bergamo, Vertova, Treviso, L’Aquila Abruzzo, Barcelona, Monte Carlo, New York and Paris. Further awards include a Pollock – Krasner Foundation Award for Painting; a Gold Medal XXV Survey of Painting, Bergamo Italy; and Commendation at the XXI Prix International D’Art Contemporani de Monte Carlo, Monaco. Keating has also given guest-lectures and tutored on the drawing studies course at the NGI, the NCAD, the Dublin Institute of Technology and at the University of Pittsburgh, U.S.A. He is married to the theatre director, Miriam O’Meara and lives in Dublin.The picturesque and historic Rock of Cashel has attracted many artists, not only to its fascinating collection of ancient buildings, but also to its chameleon-like appearance, depending on weather conditions and time of day. John Keating has chosen to focus on the relationship between the historic mound and the realities of a more contemporary Cashel. While his work is rarely overtly political, the air of deprivation emanating from the modern buildings offers a harsh perspective on the romantic halo that usually surrounds the medieval heritage of the town.