Painting the Memories Left by Disaster: Richard Hearns’s 'Pompeii' [fn Art Snap]

 "What interests me are the things that remain: traces and marks, absence, and the human impulse to remember and the resilience to recover.". 

Hearns lives and works in The Burren in County Clare, Ireland, where he encounters limestone formed over vast stretches of time and traces of human presence left among it. Instead of transferring the landscape directly onto the canvas, he allows the sensations experienced there physically and the power of nature to permeate his paintings.

His solo exhibition 'No Ruined Stones,' which explores geological time alongside human life, runs at Cadogan Gallery in London, United Kingdom, through October 3.

His brushwork also reflects his experience training in martial arts. His sense of balance, weight, breathing, and movement has developed into the physical language of his paintings. Each morning, he moves his body, writes, and meditates before beginning work. Once he starts painting, however, he surrenders himself to intuition.

He does not decide on the colors in advance, either. The same limestone can appear gray, blue, or almost purple depending on the weather and time of day. Green intensified by rain may disappear into the landscape under different light. Hearns focuses not on individual colors but on the relationships between them. A subdued color, he explains, can suddenly make another color shine.

Hearns also expressed hope for connecting with Korean audiences. Although his work is not based on Eastern traditions, he believes viewers can find a shared intuition in simplicity and movement, silence and gesture. "The most successful paintings are those that are felt deeply," he said.

en1302@fnnews.com Jang In-seo Reporter