Sean Scully b. 1946

The genesis for Scully's ongoing fascination with the stripe was a trip to Morocco in 1969 when he caught sight of colourful strips of cloth drying in the sun.  Since then, the stripe has become the most recognisable leitmotif of his bold abstract style. Following an interest in minimalism during the 1970s, he developed the theme through the formalism of his oeuvre during that decade to the vibrant forms of the present work where the individual components of the composition enigmatically merge in and out of the background setting up a dynamic interaction within the picture plane.

Scully has also maintained an ongoing interest in the actual medium of each work and the differing qualities achieved when working in oil, watercolour or pastel. As such, his works on paper are an integral part of his working process and stand as powerful works in their own right. Where the oils are perhaps more intense, both physically and metaphorically, his watercolours achieve a lucid fluidity.  With regard to the unique texture of his pastels, 'it's almost as if you could blow them away. It's like dust in the desert. They are very interesting to make - that you're pressing down powder'. The resultant effect achieves a certain ephemerailty; 'I think the pastels have that quality - they hover between being there and not being there...' (Scully, interview with Hans-Michael Herzog, ‘The beauty of the real’, Sean Scully, Milan, 1996, pp. 97–99).