Ulick Mahoney; oil on oval canvas, 1993

"This is the first solo show in Boston for this wildman native of Beantown. Cut from the same cloth as his adopted ancestors, Pollock, Smith, and Flintstone, there is a lot that is larger than life about this artist and his work. Bred as a purist in the Modernist Tradition under the wing and watchful eye of Caro, Mahoney has strayed ever so slightly from backbreaking steel to small oval abstractions: his "Mirror" paintings. These wonderfully fresh oils are as dynamic as they are delicious."

Ulick Mahoney:

New Painting

Ulick Mahoney makes paintings which absolutely jump for the joy of abstraction. They are birdbath ecstasy. For the rest of us, however, it has been hard to enjoy it - abstraction, despite the fact that it has been the "state of the art" for the Twentieth Century. The rest of us just don't get it, don't get into it, don't care.

Ulick Mahoney learned about the language of pure form as a sculptor, bending steel, welding cumbersome sheets of metal together as though he were handling butter - with such remarkable fluidity and grace he made it look almost too easy. Then things went bad. After some initial success, he lost his business, his truck, his studio, equipment, and finally his home. Six years later he is back again, and although he has always painted, now he is just painting.

Ulick Mahoney is a natural. He speaks the language. Abstraction. So what is he saying? Well, for starters he's saying yes. YES! And it shows. While it may not be so simple, so single-minded, so single mooded, it has an energy and enthusiasm for pure form that is at least singular. It fires with the rapid scatter of a machine gun, illuminated by the sheer exuberance of its color and form.

These round paintings deny the conventionality of the rectangular composition, and as a result we don't look at them like windows, doors, or boxes- they aren't those kinds of pictures. They move differently, they are flatter! Mahoney has found a perfect place to put his funky-purist abstraction - his electric patterns, where energy does not get trapped in corners, but keeps moving, generating more and more power.

These are highly musical images- a quality generally associated with pure form and color; but while they have sound, more than that they are an optical feast, an aesthetic meal free from any worldy concerns. That is the great irony about abstraction; nothing is required of the viewer but the willingness to take a bite. There is this overwhelming sense of uncertainty for the viewer, as though they are unequipped.

These paintings require nothing but looking. Let the color and marks do their crazy thing, let them be a visual meal, even a journey. Mahoney's circles of dazzling paint, his elipses of fire and ice, are passionate experiences, not for the visually lazy or narrow. There is a raw insanity, a psychotic wisdom, an excrutiating directness to this bold vision sqeezed from a tube. It has that kind of freshness, honesty, and immediacy; the sort of expression especially a child would appreciate and understand.

Catalog essay reprinted courtesy of and all rights reserved:

Addison Parks, 7/21/94

Director, Gallery 28

28 Newbury St., Boston, Ma. 02116