George Campbell RHA RUA (1917-1979) My Window Oil on board, 46 x 33cm (18 x 13'') Signed Provenance: From the Estate of the late Charlie Hennessy, Cork. George Campbell's My Window paintings...

George Campbell RHA RUA (1917-1979) My Window Oil on board, 46 x 33cm (18 x 13'') Signed Provenance: From the Estate of the late Charlie Hennessy, Cork. George Campbell's My Window paintings constitute almost a genre in themselves: each is a still-life within an interior within a landscape. Extra special are those, as in this case, which consist of a still-life within a still-life within an interior within a landscape! Like Chinese boxes or Babushka dolls, there are layers on layers of observation and comment. The exterior and the interior dance to some Campbell rhythm which lends them a life and vitality far from still. The colours and shapes of the objects on the table are thrown back into the still-life on the easel and in turn out into the scene seen through the window. Even the billowing curtains take up the shapes in their optical patterns, a fabric, if I am not mistaken, designed by the artist in the 1960s. For this is a very personal work, very much of and about the artist. Not only is he showing us the fruits of his labour, both on canvas and on fabric, but he also puts on show for our inspection, the tools of his trade. He is inviting us to come see what he is up to. It's as if the viewer has just interrupted the artist at his work: both he and we are practically in the frame. Campbell was not inclined to in-depth analysis of his work: painting, for him, was a given. He didn't choose to paint; he was the paint's medium. It was a process of sublimation whereby all his day-to-day experiences would be stockpiled and then released in a cathartic burst of creativity. Apropos of his work in general and particularly apposite to his window paintings is a line he said to camera during a T.V. interview:'Open the door and let the wind carry it!' S?le Connaughton-Deeny, November 2008

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