CAG.0135 Patrick Scott, Gold Painting 21, c.1975, acrylic and gold leaf on canvas, 123 x 124.5 cm. Purchased, 1975. © the artist’s estate.

WORK OF THE WEEK!

Gold Painting 21 by Patrick Scott was the first of the celebrated artist’s works to enter the Collection.

He had, by the mid-1970s, been incorporating gold leaf into his work for a decade. ‘I just found this book of gold leaf that I had for a long time in the house,’ remembers the artist. ‘I thought, I must try what this looks like and I used it with sort of thin washes of white and no other colour.’

In 1966, he held his first exhibition of ‘Gold Paintings’, a series that would become a signature of his career. Although conscious of the history of using gold ground in art, Scott ‘hadn’t come across any contemporary painter using gold.’

The cool geometry and sparing palette of Gold Painting 21 offer a refined counterpoint to the artist’s earlier and colourful mosaic designs at Busáras (1945-53). In contrast to Dublin’s modernist central bus terminal, with this work Scott draws us into a minimal, yet contemplative space.

Fun Fact: To mark the artist’s centenary in 2021, An Post issued a commemorative stamp, designed by Oonagh Young, the souvenir sheet of which featured Gold Painting 21.

Patrick Scott (1921-2014), who was born in Kilbrittain, County Cork, had his first exhibition when he was aged just 23. Early on, he was associated with the White Stag Group and the Irish Exhibition of Living Art (IELA). Having spent fifteen years working as an architect, he represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale in 1960, the year in which he became a full-time artist. In 2007, he was conferred with Aosdána’s honorary title of Saoi.

Gold Painting 21 is featured alongside Scott’s Meditation Painting 33 in A MATTER OF TIME, which must close on Monday 3 June.

'A Matter Of Time' exhibition at Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, Ireland, 2024 / Photograph Jed Niezgoda - jedniezgoda.com

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