Marion McKeone | Review of Pure | Temple Bar Gallery & Studios | The Sunday Business Post | 1997

Terse? Grim ? Tom ? No 

Those in search of the heady, sultry feel that kinder climates evoke shouldn’t rely on the cantankerous Irish climate; a visit to the Temple Bar Gallery and Studios next week is a far better option.

Tom Climent is a young artist for whom many are predicting great things. Small wonder. At a time when the work of many young abstract artists is depressingly terse and grim, his exuberant , larger than life canvases, awash with colour and flamboyance, provide a breath of fresh air.

It’s difficult not to eulogise Climent’s work’ lush and rich, it moves miles from the stark abstractism favoured by so many painters. His work is mature and self-assured; hard to believe this 26-year old graduated two years ago. There is no sense of the austerity and bleakness characteristic of many Irish artists, abstract or narrative. Instead, the glorious, rich colours splashed across giant canvases create baroque, extravagant works.

His exhibition in Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, which opens on Thursday, contains around half a dozen works selected from 16 canvasses. The exhibition will be opened by critic Brian Fallon, who has been one of Climent’s most enthusiastic champions.

The final selection was unclear that the time of going to press, but a review of the entire collection revealed newer works which are more complex in structure. Not all of it will please everyone; I had serious doubts about two newer works which featured with oils, one, A Love That Blooms, is bedecked with tatty artificial flowers, the other entitled Pin Pick, with sewing pins.

The remaining dozen or so more than compensated – lavish splashes of ochres, blood reds, burgundys and greens create movement between the abstract and the figurative. Climent describes his work as abstract with a narrative structure, which sums it up nicely. Climent uses both oil and acrylic, painting on several acrylic layers first. What looked like large squelches of oil paint on canvas were in fact a sort of resin painted over with oil; they added to the luxuriant feel of the works.

Even the titles are flamboyant and seductive, conjuring up images of sultry weather, tempests and South Seas; Near Wild Heaven, Voyager, Revolution, Martha’s House, Your Blue Room and Spanish Elegy. However, one of my personal favourites, Betrayed, with strong Caravaggio influences, was awash with melancholia, in stark contrast to the sensual hedonism evoked by Spanish Elegy or Near Wild Heaven. Your Blue Room was another variation on a theme. Its Mediterranean blues showed a cooler, more restrained hand.

Climent hasn’t wasted much time making an impact; he graduated from the Crawford College of Art and Design in Cork two years ago. Since then he has had solo shows at Blackcombe Gallery, University College Cork and the Triskel Arts Centre, plus a number of group shows in Cork and, strangely, Lithuania; aside from Lithuania, where his work featured as part of a group exhibition, this is his first major show outside Cork.

His work reflects little influence by Irish painters; he claims Goya, Titian, Caravaggio and Velasquez as his chief influences – it shows in this lavish use of paint and colours which give his work an extravagant and sensuous feel.

Isobel Smith, the eagle-eyed agent who has provided a short of adrenalin to the careers of other young artists like Brian McCarthy or Clea Van Der Grijn, has added Climent to her stable. According to Smith, who plans to take his work to England and the United States, such is the demand for his work that all finished work is now sold and there is a hefty waiting list of clients queuing to buy future works. This exhibition sold out weeks before it opened.

The exhibition is part of the Art Critics Prize, which Climent holds at present, and which entitles him to a solo exhibition in the gallery. Although the gallery may provide a backdrop which is a little austure for his work, this exhibition should not be missed. Climent is definitely worth watching.

Temple Bar Gallery & Studios, 5-9 Temple Bar, Dublin 2, Ireland             www.templebargallery.com

Brian Fallon | Pure | Temple Bar Gallery & Studios | The Irish Times | 1997

Brian Fallon talks to Tom Climent, the young painter he nominated to exhibit at the Temple Bar Gallery, and last year’s winner of the Victor Treacy Award.

Tom Climent’s one man exhibition is virtually his introduction to Dublin viewers; his career up to this had cenred on Cork, his native city, where he still lives and works. The breakthrough came with last year’s Victor Treacy Award in Kilkenny (incidentally, I was the judge on that occasion) which he won from an exceptionally strong entry. His present show is a direct follow – on from that.

Climent was born in 1970, the son of a Spanish father who came to Ireland in 1960’s and an Irish mother. His father is a piano teacher who also plays as a professional musician, and his mother met him through attendance at his piano classes.

Climent is the eldest of of their chldren -he has a brother and a sister – and went as a schoolboy to Rochestown College. After school he studied engineering for three years, “but I gave it up in degree year for painting.

Why did he do so, and at so late a stage?

“Well, I had been going to night classes in painting since I left shcool and I felt that it was really what I should be doing”. So he went to the Crawford School of Art, where the talented Jill Dennis was his degree teacher and Vera Ryan taught him art history.

He admits : “I found college hard enough, becauase I didn’t keep sketchbooks or any thing like that. In fourth year I had a studio separate from the college, where I had had enough of college and I just wanted to be separete from it”.

The influences of Spanish and Italian art (both Baroque and Renaissance) on his style seem obvious enough, and as a boy he and his family used to visit Spain almost every year. Since then he has been to Florence and Venice; he currently plans to visit Rome as well.

Climent reckons, however, that his response to modern art began at school when he was reproductions of some works by Matisse – “they kind of regstered with me. But it was a long time before I felt that this was what I wnated to do. Maybe I had always felt that I would end up doing painting, but it was largely a matter of confidence.

“Painters I used to like at the start were Matisse and Bonnard. In second year I was more into painters like Diebenkorn and Joan Mitchell – I was really into ‘painterly’ people! Though I suppose that I knew their work more from reproductions than from the original. In my fourth year, too, Paddy Graham had a show at the Crawford. They were big pictures, and the sparked off something in me – they had that power.

“The Abstract Expressionists, the actual way that they painted, on a big scale and with such attack -that draws me to them. But I have never seen their paintings in the origianl , except in London some years ago. The de Koonings which interest me most are the one he painted when he moved out into the country”. He also admires Francis Bacon, while admitting that he does not care for Bacon’s use of paint.

“When I began, I just painted in the bedroom at home, on anything I could get. It was not until third year or so that I began to work on a big scale, I find, I use house brushes and things like that, and I work with the canvas laid out on the floor. I painted in acrylic first, then moved into oils”.

He does not work from sketches but prefers to attack the canvas premier coup, a teachnique much used by Baroque artists.

Climent works at his painting full time – he produces about 15 pictures each year, on average – and doesn’t think he could paint and keep a full time job : “I have no ambition to teach.” But he does permit himself occasional breaks – “ I might start take two or three months off, then I start to paint again. It helps to switch off for a while, and then paintings will slowly start to form in your head. At least, that is how it works for me”.

He would like to travel and see more paintings in other countries, but he had no wish to live or work abroad, and America does not seem to interest him particulary. The drama and scale of Ventian and Baroque art he finds inspiring, “but I would like to move on to the next thing, take what I have learned and move it on a stage further. I like to think of my work as a two dimensional space that I can play around with, move it around … that is what draw me into painting.

Temple Bar Gallery & Studios, 5-9 Temple Bar, Dublin 2, Ireland           www.templebargallery.com

Tina Neylon | The Irish Examiner | 1996

The picture tells a story

TOM CLIMENT is only 26, yet is beginning to make a mark for himself as a painter.

I was studying engineering and attending night classes in painting at the same time, when suddenly it just seemed to make more sense,” he says.

“At school I enjoyed painting, but I didn’t feel I was good enough to do it full-time, but then I found I was spending more time at it than anything else”. He studied at the Crawford College of Art from 1991 -95.

He hadn’t regretted the decision. “When you’re slightly older, it makes more sense, you have a clearer image in your head of what you want to do. I always knew I would paint, it just took me some time to get around to it.”

His work is strongly influenced by Spanish and Italian Masters.

“We used to spend nearly every summer in Valencia, so perhaps that did have some effect on me”, he smiles.

Last year Brian Fallon selected Tom for the Victor Treacy Award, for the best emerging artist in Ireland. And also picked his work for his recent Critic’s choice Exhibition n the Temple Bar Gallery.

Tom’s paintings are very large, and full of rich colours He works directly onto the canvas. “I use acrylic for the first couple of layers, and that dries quickly. It’s when I apply the oil that the painting really comes together. Before I start I have a general idea of what I want, but I work the final images out as I paint

“They’re all kinds of interiors, three dimensional spaces, and there’s a story in each of my paintings but it’s ambiguous, which forces people to look at them more. There are semi-abstract figures in some of them. ”Though he feels he’s been influenced by artists like Goya and Carravaggio, he sees art as a contiuum and admires Matisse ad Bacon too, “though maybe not for their subject matter. What interest me most is the how”.

Tom likes Cork with its ‘small community of artists, all of whom know each other’. He has his own studio in the city, and enjoys meeting other artists regularly, particularly the Blackwater studio artists. He particularly admires painter Maurice Desmond, and he very much enjoyed studying under Jill Dennis and Vera Ryan.

“It’s funny really how you move on. Now when I see my paintings in Temple Bar I don’t feel the same about them. Maybe it’s because I know they’ll go to whoever has bought them. It forces me to do something new”.

Rosemary Hamilton | The Butler Gallery | The Irish Examiner | 1996

Artist Tom Climent is the winner of the Victor Treacy Award for 1996.

The Best Emerging Artist was chosen by Brian Fallon and announced at the Butler Gallery in Kilkenny.

Climent was one of six young artists invited to exhibit at the annual award show which is a showcase for young emerging artists, sponsored by Carlow business man Victory Treacy, of Victor Treacy International.

Tom Climent grew up in Douglas, Cork. He studied at the Crawford College and has exhibited two solo shows in his home county, and has also participated in a number of group shows.

He said that his immediate plans are to “get back to work”, and that he hopes to have a show in Dublin next year.

While opening the Award Show and announcing his independent decision, Brian Falon had a word of praise for each of the exhibitors. It has been a very difficult decision. It is a most even show. But I must put my neck on the line”. Before announcing the winner, he added: “I don’t mean to devalue the other artists”.

Also exhibiting at the award show in the Butler until December 8, are Sarah Walker, Oliver Comerford, Suzanne Chan, David Quinn, Fiona Joyce and Michael Canning.

The Victor Treacy Award Show has been an annual event since 1991 and the winner receives the handy sum of £1,500. After this year’s award ceremony Victory Treacy said: “Being a businessman, I know how hard it is for any young people to get going. I wanted to provide young artists with a kick start.”

As to the quality of the country’s emerging artists, Brian Fallon asserted: “There is an enormous amount of promising young talent in the country today. We are becoming more visually aware as a nation”. When asked what the future would hold for the show’s exhibitors, Fallon replied: “As to how far they go after this, well it’s the Devil’s Glen… But in terms of the quality of emerging talent in the country, it’s never been better”.

George Vaughan, a director of the Grennan Mill Craft school claimed that this was the best award show ever, it was a “joy to behold”.

Butler Gallery, The Castle, Kilkenny, Ireland                 www.butlergallery.com