Featured Artist for September - November 2001

Featured GiveAway by Thomas Holloran Hidden Mountain, 12" x 7" - 2001, Oil On Woodpanel Valued at $1000

Toni Ellington New Bern, NC

Halloran then went on to the Museum School for a four year studio program. A classically trained musician, his gift and talent are being noticed. Halloran developed a unique style of painting that has been enriched by his passion for music. He applies layers upon layers of paint which he allows to drip and mesh over the surface of his work to create a rich depth. His intense expression towards art confronts his viewers with tremendous scale in a dramatic fashion.

Like Bacon before him, Halloran layers his work so intensively that it captures his viewer in an awe-inspiring way. You are drawn to examine each work for not only the intensity but for the sheer scale. A remarkable light glows from within each work of art that is simply extraordinary. To Halloran, the act of creating is ultimately an act of discovery, a predestined path, and it is this path which inspires him.

Halloran is most creative during the late evening hours. He starts painting in the early afternoon and sometimes will still be painting when the sun rises. He can control his lighting much easier in the evening and with less distractions than what the work day presents. He paints full time and supports himself solely through the sales of his art.

Beethoven's Death Mask Study #1 Oil on Acrylic primed canvas 48" X 36", 2000

Halloran's goal is to paint as if Beethoven would paint if he were a painter. "To create a tumultuous battle of darks and lights, warms and cools, hard edge and soft edge, etc. To paint historical themes in the most modern of ways and to unite the past with the future. I see my work as not revolutionary but rather evolutionary."

He dislikes trends of the art world as well as pseudo intellects and materialistic attitudes towards art. Halloran loves the work of Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Lucien Freud, Beethoven, Bach, and Mahler.

Beethoven's Death Mask Study #3 Oil on Acrylic primed canvas 84" X 72", 1994-95

Discovering new ways to apply paint and pushing the envelope on structure and form is what gives Halloran incentive to paint. He continues to search and find the beautiful abstract compositions in form and throughout nature. He also battles and struggles while developing his canvas never really knowing what will emerge.

Halloran mixes rocks, sand, ash, pumice stone, marble dust and any other archival crushed stone fillers into acrylic emulsions to create thick topographical passages of paint to create crusty, rocklike formations on his large scale work. He will then glaze, stain and do whatever comes naturally to distress the surface and image. He tries to take two dimensional painting to the brink of low relief sculpture.

Beethoven's Death Mask Variation #4 Oil on Acrylic Ground primed canvas 96" x 72", 1998

Halloran enjoys composing sonatas and fugues and combining modern harmonies with traditional forms. Watching the New England Patriots on Sundays and listening to his favorite composers is also a stroke of enjoyment.

Halloran first came across Beethoven's Death Mask in a library and was struck by the brutal beauty and fullness of features he had never seen before in any portrait of Beethoven. He wanted to capture that same intensity in his own work. Soon after graduating, he began work on the Beethoven Death Mask Variations. "As the variations progressed they began to take on multiple meanings, the most important being Beethoven's humanistic qualities of the heroic individual who confronts life's many obstacles." In his paintings, he attempts to replicate these qualities by torturing and distressing the image on the canvas using a series of techniques that resemble decay and fossilization. He successfully expresses death and transfiguration of the human spirit and Beethoven simply emerges from the debris as a solid and stonelike figure.

Halloran wants to challenge the viewer to see the work as a phenomenon of nature rather than a painting, affecting the viewer psychologically, questioning the idea of eternity. Temporarily forget that it is a painting but rather a visual and spiritual event.

A resume and biography can be found at Halloran's web site.

Beethoven's Death Mask Variation #7 Acrylic & mix media on canvas 84" x 72" , 1995

ARTIST STATEMENT

In a world filled with pre-fabricated commercial garbage, where the package is worth more than the product, art is a place of refuge. As a result, the art I seek for inspiration is that which has soul and spirit and not just a political commentary on everyday life, rather a beckoning to a deeper spiritual journey, to imagine the edge of eternity. I believe in a world where religion and science are not at odds, where every place is sacred, and everyone’s soul is valued. Unfortunately, such a place is named utopia and until it becomes reality, art not only provides a refuge, it also grants a direction. My art is intended to act as one trail up the mountain, guiding the viewer to higher places within oneself. ~ Thomas Halloran