The Spirit In The Mass

The most recent painting in the exhibition, The Spirit In The Mass took several hundred hours to complete. The paint used in the final passage of colour - the slowly shading light gold - is made from pigment admixed with a very finely ground ashes. Invisible to the eye, it can nonetheless be felt by the fingertips, in that exploratory gesture of touch that Kieran always welcomes as ‘completing’ the work of his art.

The phrase from which the painting’s title is derived belongs to the great British modernist painter David Bomberg, one of whose pupils - the late Miles Richmond - was an early influence of Kieran’s own. There is no space here to properly explore either artist’s interpretation of this important concept, but in Kieran’s case at least it could be heard as echoing Hegel’s famous remark in the Phenomenology of Spirit that “Der geist ist ein knochen” (“the spirit is a bone”). It also has more than a passing connection with William Blake.

Oil on Canvas

Dimensions: 138 x 138 cm

Price: £60,000 - SOLD