ref: bLk Oct 6-Nov 15 2018 STUDIO SIENKO GALLERY Phelan Black - Open a 'pdf' of this press release - return to Galleries PR Index

Afterlife

when we are gone

our lives will continue without us

-or so we believe and,

at times, we have tried to imagine

the gaps we will leave being filled

with the brilliance of others:

someone else gathering plums

from this tree in the garden,

someone else thinking this thought

in a room filled with stars

and coming to no conclusion

other than this –

this bungled joy, this inarticulate

conviction that the future cannot come

without the grace

of setting things aside,

of giving up

the phantom of a soul

that only seemed to be

while it was passing.

John Burnside

Phelan Black, who was born in the UK, has

lived for the last 30-odd years in Italy. His

paintings are steeped in a dreamy delicious

aliveness. The oils, slightly sombre, hint at

dark politics and troubles. The past and

present intertwine, get tangled up, ensnared.

A strong erotic pulse often animates or

lurks. Masculinity preys. Women besport

themselves. Voo Comprà, like a Flemish

prince, saturated in gorgeous colours, is

selling things or himself -- or someone else

perhaps-- on the beach. An ice skater,

painted to the nines, entwines the dancing

satyr of Mazara del Vallo, unbeknownst to

her. He glitters, she glamours; together they

are glamoured. And we are glamoured.

Swept along by the tides and the rain drops

on the sea and the light over the hills. We,

too, are carried away. And a turtle dove

coos. It could be winsome or coy, but the

undertow plays a riff raff unsettling line.

This Rimini is not of the luxury hotels. It is

one we could love in, too.

Prof. Helen Hills, Art Historian

Phelan Black is a British Artist born in 1948.

In the 70's he was a member of the set of creative

spirits associated with The Colony Rooms and

Tuttons Brasserie, together with painters like Tim

Behrens, Cragie Aitcheson, Patrick Proctor and

David Hockney.

For more than 30 years Phelan has been living

and painting in Italy in the province of Rimini,

the birth place of Fellini and Marco Pesarese.

Now in this, his 70th year, he returns to London

to show a collection of this work.

Olga Sienko, Artist and Gallery Director

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