Cristín Leach Hughes | Review of Final State | Blueleaf Gallery | The Sunday Times | 2012

One of the great joys of looking at painting lies in observing how the artist handles colour. The abstract architectural structures in Tom Climent’s compositions shimmer in a place where green and pink meet orange, and russet red dances with purple-violet blue. Climent incorporates plaster into the larger canvases. In Mountain Machine, it forms a floating ceiling with the texture of cracked lava above a cool interior. Walls appear to shift and slide with dreamlike inevitability; their soft, blurred edges imply a slow, tentative settling that is far from decisive and yet unavoidable. Climent paints slanted roofs and gable ends that echo the ghosts of built structures, unfinished and disused. At the base of Monument to the Hereafter, plaster lumps mimic the rubble of disturbed earth. These non-places are a kind of everyplace, but carry special resonance in the context of post-building boom Ireland. In Artificer Transducer, the house form morphs into something less specific: an almost crystalline structure, no longer manmade Climent’s use of colour borders on the psychedelic. It’s risky but assured and instinctively right. He makes pigment glow.

Margaret O’Brien | Irish Interiors Magazine | 2010

Tom Climent’s paintings have an arrestingly luminosity. It’s a quality that reels in the viewer, compelling them to stop, and stare into the soul of his vibrant work.

In recent years many of those in the know in the Irish art world, have tipped the Cork based artist as ‘one-to-watch’, but arguably Tom Climent has now arrived.

A recipient of the Tony O’ Malley Award and the Victor Treacey Award, Tom Climent’s work already features in prestigious collections, including The Central Bank, UCC, AIB Bank, The Office of Public Works and NCB Stockbrokers, to name but a few.

“From a young age I was always interested in painting and drawing. I remember seeing a painting by Matisse while at secondary school and knew that was what I wanted to do. I suppose Matisse has always been a huge influence, but other artists who have had an effect on my work include old masters like Carravaggio and Vermeer through to abstract expressionists, and more recent painters like Howard Hodgkin and Cy Twombly”.

On completing  secondary school, Tom opted to study engineering, but the attraction of becoming an artist stayed with him.  “I started taking night classes in art at 17, in the Crawford College, Cork with the late Jo Allen”, he explained. “I continued with these night classes for four years.  Jo was a huge influence on my becoming an artist, her encouragement and support was very helpful at a time when I was unsure about which direction to take, as were my parents who were understanding  and supportive which was a big help, I eventually left engineering to pursue painting full time at the Crawford College, Cork”.

Since graduating from Crawford College in 1995, Tom has gone on to show his work, to much acclaim, in solo exhibitions at The Temple Bar Gallery and Studios , The Hunt Museum, Limerick and The Fenton Gallery, Cork. Later this year he will stage a solo show in the Sligo Art Gallery and will also take part in The Chicago Art Fair

Asked about his striking use of colour, Tom responded, “My Father is from Valencia, and I spent summers there as a child. I suppose the light and colour there has become part of my work, not consciously but intuitively. Recently, I have lived on and off near Malaga in Southern Spain, painting there and exhibiting the works back in Ireland. Spain is a part of who I am and this is reflected in the works that I have produced”.

While Tom Climent’s newer works are more architectural, they still contain the elusive abstract qualities that have characterised his work over the years. According to Tom,  “the architectural elements give my newer paintings a more grounded narrative”.

“They are an amalgamation of structures, deconstructed and re-assembled. I have a desire to impose order and clarity on the abstraction that was evident in previous works, which has led to a more focused image in many of my current pieces. The works can declare a dramatic physicality while conversely appear to be quite subtle”. He added, “I have been trying to introduce the idea of a sacred space, embodied in the landscape”.

Another notably difference in Tom’s recent work is that the scale has been reduced. “In the past I used only paint on a big scale from 5 feet up to 10 feet in size, I found it hard to distill what I was trying to do on a smaller scale, but since painting in Spain, where I work on a roof terrace, I started painting in a smaller scale”.

However he hasn’t foresaken his large scale work. “Now I combine large pieces with smaller ones, to the point where I don’t see any difference between them”.

Tom sums up his appraoch as ‘intuitive’.  “I have a rough idea before I start a piece, but the painting process itself determines the overall look of the finished painting . The newer pieces are a combination of architectural structures  with more organic elements.The paintings themselves are suggestive, I try not to describe something literally but instead allow the viewer make up their own mind as to what the painting is about.

I would like viewers to have a personal emotional reaction and connection to the work. On another level,  I’m trying to achieve a sense of light emitting from the canvas , that draws people into the space in the paintings”.

Tom’s work has essentially stayed within the European tradition of painting, which is a “visual” one, concerned with picture space and the relations which pertain between the real world of three dimensions and the essentially illusory two dimensional world of the canvas. He admits, “This idea of creating space on a two dimensional surface has always been important to me, the conflict between representation and abstraction as a means of doing this has created a push and pull between these two elements”.

Tom starts around 20-30 new paintings each year. “I’ve always got pieces I’m working on.  The way I paint now is to build up layers, consequently the pieces are constantly changing until I feel they’re finished”

Asked how he knows a piece is finished, he replied, “It’s something that comes with experience and instinct, there comes a point when you have to let go. Each painting is different, with different energies or personalities – you know you are finished when  that individual personality and energy is formed”.

Working as an artist is a notoriously difficult way of life and Tom is all too aware of the pros and cons.  “Working as a professional artist can be great, you’re working for yourself, you’re your own boss, the time is yours”.

But, he concedes, “the down side is it can be uncertain financially and to that end, it helps if you can build up good relatonships with galleries and collectors. I can go through periods of self doubt about the work though, which is all part of the process, it helps you strive to paint better. If you felt good about your work you might as well give up, it’s the constant questioning and re-evaluation that helps you grow as an artist”.

Tom Climent offers some sound advice to those looking to buy original art for their home. “The best thing you can do is to let yourself fall in love with a work of art. It is something you will hopefully have for a long time in your home, so you have to enjoy it”.

He continued, “a work of art can add so much to someone’s living space , visit art galleries as much as you can, get a feel for work you like and respond to, ask advice from people you might know who have an interest in art, keep an eye out for open days in artists’ studios, and visit the end of year shows at art colleges”.

Robert O’Byrne | Dictionary of Living Irish Artists | 2009

Few young artists of late have caused such excitement at their debut as Tom Climent. But then again, few young Irish artists begin their painting career by offering his kind of stirring exuberance. Within a year of graduating from Cork’s Crawford College of Art and Design, Climent had won the Victor Treacey Award for emerging artist and begun to garner widespread critical accolades. At the time of his first solo exhibition in Dublin in August 1997, the Sunday Business Post’s Marion McKeone declared, ‘ 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…the glorious, rich colours splashed across giant canvasses create baroque, extravagant works’

Baroque was a term frequently evoked when describing Climent’s pictures in the late 1990s and it was applicable not just because their theatrical manner so often evoked memories of the 17th century Spanish masters to whom the artist acknowledged a debt but also owing to their grandiose scale. Looking back on this work in 2005, former Irish Times critic Brian Fallon recalled how ‘ the tonality was often dark and sultry with splashes of brighter colour, suggesting a modernised version of chiaroscuro; the subject was not precisely figurative but suggested figurative themes.’ Early in the new millennium Climent’s work underwent a change, not least in scale since he began painting much smaller works on board rather than canvas as before. Furthermore while retaining their heightened lyricism his images became more abstact even as his palette grew brighter, the latter perhaps a response to periods of time spent in Spain where, like George Campbell several decades before him, he was struck by the difference between Irish and Iberian light. In 2006 Vera Ryan observed that Climent was now more influenced by Howard Hodgkin – the subject of his college history thesis – than by old masters. And while he has only on occasion reverted to painting on a large scale, his saturated colouring always retains its brilliance.

‘He is an innately good painter and a fantastic colourist,’ declared Cork gallerist Nuala Fenton in 2005. ‘His work is developing all the time, which makes him all the more interesting to follow…There is a real sense of energy and drama about his work, but there is also something very emotional about it and it’s very subtle.’ Fenton was right to note how Climent’s work is still developing as he continues to discover his own potential. Recent paintings tend to possess an architectonic quality with structures that seem to serve a religious function shown looming out of a mysterious fog. No longer a young artist, he continues to dazzle with his painterly pyrotechnics.

Alannah Hopkin | Representing Art in Ireland | The Fenton Gallery Book | 2008

Tom Climent can create spectacularly dramatic paintings. With a characteristic and impressive use of chiaroscuro, areas of darkness are counter-balanced by vibrant colour. For him, the process of painting is both spontaneous and meditative, informed by his knowledge of art history yet not constrained by it. His art speaks directly to the emotions of the viewer, and avoids the predominant preoccupation of postmodern practice, such as irony, repetition, or references to popular culture.

Climent’s early work consisted of interiors painted in a loose, gestural style, sometimes sparked by specific works of Caravaggio, Velasquez, Degas, and others. Over time a more abstract approach evolved, often using a staight edge in constrast to areas of flowing paint. The scale of the work increased steadily, culminating in Obscura(2002), which measures 9 feet by 5 feet.

Climent’s father, the musician and composer Angel Climent, is Spanish, and as a child Climent often visited Spain. An extended stay near Malaga in 2003-4 led to the creation of smaller works in oil on board. This was the first time he had worked directly from nature, on the rooftop terrace of his house, overlooking sea and mountains. Works from this period –The Night of Ermina(2004) and Winter Light(2004), for example – are often divided by a horizontal plane, but are still closer to abstract explorations of light and shade than conventional landscapes.

Marking a return to the preoccupation he had with 17th century painting a decade ago, Minotaur’s Piano(2006) is an enigmatic work wich seems to have taken inspiration from Vermeer in terms of approach to subject, composition and colour.

Climent’s intense colour and intuitive composition remain a constant in his work, as he continues his exploration of  the richly rewarding interplay between his subconscious emotional world and the physical process of painting.