Mollie Douthit at RUBICON breaking down - building up

This summer, in a new temporary studio at her parents home, near Fargo in mid-Western America, Mollie had a chance to start something new. Most artists work with familiar things around them all the time, because they like it that way. The favorite tools, books, props and even the architecture of their workspace prompt them forward in their individual daily quest. Sometimes these visual reminders of where they have been and where they should go, become plain burdensome. Artists know they need to shake it off. Change is traumatizing for us humans but its also energizing, we all know that but it takes courage to go with it. This summer Mollie built a new language brick by brick, she constructed what she wanted to paint by mixing oil paint and applying it to some old wooden bricks. We love the small paintings exploring space, color and the act of painting that she has made of these. www.rubicongallery.ie & https://www.facebook.com/RubiconGallery/ [Image by Mollie Douthit, “Neurotic, oil on linen, 20x25cm courtesy of the artist & Rubicon]

Michael Kane at RUBICON never plays by the rules

In September this year we showed Michael’s works on paper at an Art Fair in the prestigious equivalent of RHA, The BOZAR in Brussels. A new European audience came to know what this venerable Irish artist wants to say, they loved it. Michael had a significant birthday this year (of course he wants no fuss or mention of that – we feel a little safe as he confines himself to his vast, impressive library of great literature and the ‘wireless’ – Michael is not much into BLOGS). Anyway the thing is, Michael may have passed that age when others among us will express our wild side, tear up the rule books, do fun things, make something we want to make without worrying about whether its what folk expect of you or not. So in Brussels we showed this fantastic large Papier Mache Head/Portrait. We feel very close to this fella as he had his own seat beside us on the Aer Lingus flight from Dublin. I’m not sure he will come to the VUE party – but maybe? [Image of artwork by Michael Kane, courtesy of the artist & Rubicon]

Eithne Jordan at RUBICON painting the present

“The longer I live the more I would like to put the world in suspension and grip the present before it is eaten by the next second and becomes the past” Siri Hustveldt “Mysteries of the Rectangle” – recommended reading

There are moments when we can feel this way about any experience. The artist Eithne Jordan has always had a most singularly amazing way of presenting a static image with all the energy and possibilities of what it felt like to be there still locked into it. Hustveldt talks about the “immutable stillness” of a painting – she notes that it differs from all other art forms because the whole story is there all at once. It’s not revealed in a sequence of chapters, movements or frames – visual art lives outside time. In daily life we are constantly editing stimuli, we are choosing what we need to see to survive – missing much of the detail. In paintings we can look, rest, return – paintings wait for us to see our own truth in them. www.rubicongallery.ie & https://www.facebook.com/RubiconGallery/ [Image by Eithne Jordan, Forest iii, gouache/paper is courtesy of the artist and Rubicon Gallery]

Eithne Jordan at RUBICON looking and thinking and looking and not thinking

[Image by Eithne Jordan, Forest V, Oil on Canvas, 50x65cm courtesy of the artist and Rubicon Gallery] Eithne Jordan makes small gouaches from photographs that she takes while traveling, many of which she paints again in oil. Most of these are urban images; streetscapes and interiors. Cities are where she consciously goes for her work/research. Knowing her well, we know most of her ‘traveling' is far more modest. She loves to walk. Short walks, to get from there to here or to do a chore, and daily recreational walks - ideally with a dog or suitable walking companion (one who keeps pace and talks, but just enough). No month goes by without an exceptional and adventurous walk, one that is longer and more strenuous and offers some new excitement to the eye. We have shared a lot of these walks with Eithne but she rarely shares images of these treasured more private travels. These paintings are rare and we love them for that. www.rubicongallery.ie & https://www.facebook.com/RubiconGallery/

Mollie Douthit at RUBICON: painting colour

[Image by Mollie Douthit, “atelier nerves, atelier relief”, oil on linen, 5x7] Mollie was preparing her MA exhibition at Burren College of Art when we met a couple of years ago. Mollie had hardly thought about the particulars and process of her graduation. She was, like many interesting painters, to busily arguing and agreeing with the silent gathered group of her own just recently finished work. I'm pretty sure she hardly noticed those of us around her. Mollie thinks about painting all the time – pure painting. We said goodbye this summer, she was on her way home for a couple of months, and we told her to rest - just hang up her brushes. She had a very successful year of exhibitions, prizes and sales and she was exhausted and pressed to find new subject matter to continue working. We may as well have told her not to breathe. She spent the weeks at home painting the simplest subject she could – colour. www.rubicongallery.ie & https://www.facebook.com/RubiconGallery/

Michael Kane at RUBICON "few are angels"

[Image by Michael Kane from the series Life Story, mixed media on paper] Michael Kane was already a famous artist when he started working with Rubicon Projects in 1990. He was a giant (literally, as well as figuratively – tall and rangy with a deep commanding voice and fearsomely strong views on anything that mattered or often anything at all). He has not lost any of this presence in the past 25 years. He could have intimidated any newly-minted “gallery girl” but he has two qualities that soften this profile; humour and humanity. Michael’s works on paper are a series light-touch rumination on the human condition. He often references the wisdom of Greek literature and mythology in his depiction of our tendency as humans towards adventures that come close to self-destruction or delinquency. “We all are men, in our own natures frail, and capable of our flesh; few are angels.” William Shakespeare, Henry VIII www.rubicongallery.ie & https://www.facebook.com/RubiconGallery/