RICHARD M. FAHEY

"I equate creating my paintings much like a writer creates a novel, each series is a new chapter."

-Richard M. Fahey

"The c0llective"

(1970 - Present)

ACCLAIMED SUPPORT

"In the final paintings of Fahey's time in the Northeast, palms trees stretch vividly upward and we can almost see a battle of struggle and hope confronting one another from behind yet another new style of veiling. Whites wash blues where a story is bursting from its seams to get out. Confrontation with the facts of reality all but hide in these paintings, it's as if he has created a movement to manifest answers that have not yet fully revealed themselves."  (The TEEN's)

- Jason Peabody, LA Writer

"This collection of acrylic paintings preserves the momentary affects an active environment impresses on its audience. Water, land and sky are expressed in bold color and dramatic mark making on an impressive scale. Created in the Hamptons, Richard Fahey has captured the diverse movement of Long Island's awe-inspiring landscape."  (The 90's)

-April Frezzel, Art Critic

The work of Richard Fahey is at once traditional and adventurous.  That he aligns himself with the great abstract painters of the New York school (one sees touches of Motherwell, Kline, and Gorkey in his work) shows both the level of his ambition and his willingness to acknowledge influences. Yet he brings the paintings solidly into the eighties with his implied subject matter, his moving space, and his high-key color.  The fact that Fahey’s pictures traffic in the unconscious spirit:  He is not afraid to “know himself," nor is he afraid for us to know him too.

Fahey’s use of acrylic paint on paper also liberates him from the constraints of the past.  Whereas the abstract expressionists painted “into” the canvas, Fahey is painting on the paper.  And it is in par with the resilience of the paper which allows Fahey to pursue mark-making as it relates to the subject matter.   Fahey’s work is indeed redolent with suggestive imagery:  Are these beach scenes, swimming pools, or mountain landscapes?  It is the world of dreams, the sense of place we have in them, that Fahey creates. His willingness to accept images as they appear to him is what makes these pictures so exciting, and what allows Fahey to build on the work of his predecessors.  And his own, strong, pictorial ability, as well as his openness to the viewer, is what makes them rich and rewarding.

                                                                                                                                       Pat Sutton(Lipsky), Painter NYC

I have a lot of respect for the artists you see here, both as artists and as human beings.  It’s not easy to take criticism. Few people like to be criticized, and when you talk about going higher and facing another level of criticism — namely, Modernist criticism (which is what Triangle Workshop represents) — you’re talking about something still harder to take.

This kind of criticism is a paradox.  What is comes down to — well — it’s what we call “self-criticism” (I’m not entirely happy with the expression.)  And you know how hard that is.   Criticism can paralyze, as well as release — and make you feel your capacity for creating things of beauty.  These artists, at any rate, faced modernist criticism — and that’s about the only thing they have in common, which is not to say that all the artists here are Modernists.  Many are, but, as I said, not all. 

The first group Triangle show featured those artists who live in and around New York City.  This second Triangle exhibition — this one — features Americans who live outside of New York City (and who, of course, attended the Triangle Workshop in Pine Plains, New York.)  That there is as much talent as there is no longer surprises me.

No doubt, some of my friends will ask: “Where’s your work?” Well, in one sense, I suppose, these are “my” works.  In most cases I was able to visit the studios of these artists, and I tell you this would have been a different exhibition if they, the artists themselves had chosen the work, — although it is they who have organized this exhibition, one that I think is necessary and historically important.

                                                                                                                                       Valentin Tatransky, Curator

Public And Private Collections

social Media