Breda was the Grand Marshall at the Commencement Exercises at The American University of Rome Degree giving ceremony this year.

BREDA ENNIS

There is a rush, a positive outpouring like a bird singing in spring time. The poet Gerald Manley Hopkins expresses this so well in ‘Spring’:

“Nothing is so beautiful as spring-
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing….”

Breda Ennis’s work seems to evoke the joyful lusciousness of spring in terms of light and exuberance. There is a lilt and dance, a sense of wind and movement. Yet, in the end it becomes settled and beautifully composed.

It as if she has come out of the dark, for her early etchings from the 80’s and early 90’s were small in scale and rather private. Whereas in the last three years or so her work has a new light filled openness, as if she says:
“I am brave enough to fling those lines and colours because that is how I feel!”.

The pictures speak of a new found confidence. Born and bred in Ireland she has adopted and been adopted by Italy. Her Italian is fluent and her achievements in Rome have been remarkable and must have helped to foster strong belief in herself, launching an expressive power, a delight in colour and light that is new to her. She also has had misfortunes and like a tree which adapts itself to circumstance she has made good out of adversity.

There is a triptych painted in 2004, which is 200cm across called ‘A drink of spring’ that is both elegant and eloquent in its simplicity. The dancing reds and blues ascend from the base like blown leaves to the vaporous pale blue top. This is beautifully light and joyful. It was inspired by the poems of her Uncle John Ennis, thus celebrating her Irish roots while deeply ensconced in Italy.

In ‘Paradise Found’ there is a marvellous fusion of yellows blues and whites. Particularly vivid are the lines of pure black, like bass notes, acting as a powerful counterpoint. It is worth noting that though the work is mainly painted in acrylic she has also used oil pastel and oil pencil, no doubt enabling her to have more freedom and spontaneity.

Another triptych ‘Celtic Intimations’ is almost Japanese (Tosa Mitsuyoshis ‘Scene from the Tale of Senji’ 1610) in its clear and simple divisions and restricted colour.

These three works give way to something less abstract that reflect her love of trees. It is more specific and tends to be larger in scale. For convenience she has had constructed a wooden platform to work on.

“Il Gelso di Capecchio” numbers 1-5 are of Mulberry trees in Umbria in winter. They are of single trees or in tandem. The branches are severely truncated and the trunk itself seems to writhe and twist but the existence of the tree is strongly implied and symbolic. Though Breda’s work with its bold brushwork would seem to have little connection with the highly wrought work of Caspar David Friedrich, never the less there are similarities. Both artists are expressionist, romantic and use symbolism, practically in respect of trees. Friedrich’s ‘Dolman in the Snow’ (3 trees with broken branches) and twenty years later ‘Oak tree in Snow’ are strong images of trees or tree almost in extremis, implying loss, both painters having a strong identity with the tree, with belief in its existence and survival powers.

Her most recent work is inspired by an Irish orchard which has belonged to her family for over a hundred years. Since childhood she has found great contentment and happiness in it, and says “It is a poetic corner of reality, a kind of paradise”. She is helped by drawings and photographs to help realise the paintings; but I would say that a lot of it is to do with recollection, memory, invention and, most important, the elimination which gives the pictures meaning and a simple resolution. The paintings in the ‘Spring’ and ‘Autumn’ series’ are ambiguous and beguiling and can be read in many different ways.

The current ‘Autumn’ pictures are the most evocative and personal of her work. The stakes are higher. She is committed to the feeling of the place – those trees, in that space, in certain weather make for greater dynamism and certainly more poetry.

Resolving these works is an adventure. She is becoming more aware of colour and also of the design of the rectangle in a harmonious way involving the Golden Section. The subject, that is the orchard, makes demands, and creates polarity or tension between objectivity and her creative feelings. The more she is beholden to this discipline of observation the more strong and authentic her pictures become. They become more essential and necessary.

So she is taking more risks and in so doing she is saying something very important about a certain revered spot. It was Goethe who said “If I knew the world was going to end tomorrow I would still plant my apple tree today”.

Ennis is making her mark, a very definite and original one.

Anthony Eyton RA
The Royal Academy
London
16th February 2007

(in fondo alla pagina.)

A renowned painter and Academician of The Royal Academy of Arts in London (and former lecturer in The Royal Academy Schools), Anthony Eyton’s long and distinguished career has seen him painting in almost every corner of the world. He has won numerous awards and has been a Member of the Royal Watercolour Society since 1988 and a Member of the Cambrian Academy since 1993. His work is also in the Permanent Collection of The Tate Gallery in London.

Breda Ennis

Absolute enchantment is what we feel when we look and linger in front of the work of Breda Ennis. Her way of working as a painter is one which comprises such an intense sense of colour, her canvases have the effect of not only immediately engaging but also absorbing the attention of anyone who happens to stop and stand still before them. Her paintings are a complete and utter enjoyment for the eyes and spirit. In Ennis, Nature, with its lyrical abstraction, becomes a score which always and repeatedly evokes a new musicality. You find, in her work, the origin of the earth and the sky, and you feel and imagine the flight and movement of all the diverse elements in the atmosphere. Her colours evoke the feel and smell and touch and sound of one’s memory of nature.

Breda Ennis was born in Dublin, Ireland. But she has lived in Italy for many years. Nevertheless, her Irish roots are evident in almost all her work. One particular painting in this exhibition, entitled “Celtic Intimations” from 1994, is a work where visionary elements of a Celtic nature mix beautifully with Mediterranean elements to produce a fantastic vision of invented reality.

In two other works, “A Drink of Spring” and “Paradise Found”, what we witness is a process, dynamically presented, which begins first with a moment of spontaneous semination, then one of growth or evolution, and then, finally, decomposition back into nature. Again and again we witness in Ennis’ work this process of birth and growth and disintegration. The images seem to burst unto the canvas as if commanded by memory. They are pushed along by winds from the deep subconscious, exploding in waves of chromatic influxes, both soft and rich, and pressed by trajectories, sometimes short and sudden as in “The Illuminated Path” and in the Spring series of oils. Here the work has a transparency which is continuously shaken and moved by light.

In his book, A La Recherche du Temps Perdu, Marcel Proust remarks: “the real road to research does not consist in trying to find new worlds, but in finding new ways of vision.” In Breda Ennis’ extraordinary Spring and Autumn series of oil paintings, the trees of the orchard in Ireland are seen with new eyes, eyes which peer beyond chromatic contamination. Colour is not only seen surrounding the trees, but is seen flowing out of them, drawing the gaze of the observer along with its lifting waves and shape and movement.

Breda Ennis is, one can say, a kind of contemplative. She is someone who listens to the inner voices of Nature. And her brushstrokes paint and colour what she hears. This leading and talented Irish artist is in no sense turning to Nature as a form of escape or even as a refuge. On the contrary – in a most dynamic and original way, she is instead seeking out those hidden messages which Nature is trying to pass on to us. And that makes her a quite remarkable painter.

Maestro Franco Mulas
14th February 2007

Maestro Franco Mulas is one of Italy’s best known contemporary artists. He has exhibited widely in Italy and abroad. In1986 he participated in The Quadriennale di Roma and in 1989 he also participated in an exhibition of Italian Painting in San Paolo and Rio de Janeiro. In 1989 he was presented with “The Italian Presidential Medal for Painting” by the Accademia Nazionale di San Luca in Rome. His cycle of paintings entitled “Big Burg” was exhibited in a Mostra Antologica in Palazzo Braschi, Rome. From 1998 he has been working on a new cycle of paintings called “De rerum natura”. In 2000, he was nominated an Academician of the Academy of San Luca in Rome.

THE SEARCH FOR BEAUTY

Like all things that can be described as ‘essential’, and not needing to indulge in forced elegant forms. The Pyramid Art Studio came into existence near the ancient walls of Rome, in the area of the Pyramid of Gaio Cestio, in a modern and Spartan space, almost underground, and threaded with silver metal pipes. This is the way it should be. It is not, and must not be, a commercial art centre or a place of fashion and for socializing. It is a laboratory of ‘images’, both ideal and formal, where students and young artists work and dialogue, learn and teach from each other under the guidance of Breda Ennis. The Studio is in fact an emanation of The American University of Rome, which created it to give potential to it’s role in teaching and formation, with a program of research and artistic activity formulated by Breda Ennis.

continue reading "The Pyramid Arts Studio"

Breda Ennis

Breda Ennis’s world is connected to both Ireland and Italy. The paintings talk of an experience of place and a respect for the experience of seeing without being illustrative. They are a poetic and painterly response to associated feelings.

Breda Ennis surprises us all with a new release of colour and energy. In some of the works Mediterranean blues , white foaming sea, ghosts of birds, and clouds all give testimony to the euphoric nature of the paintings. A romantic streak – listening to the sounds of the Irish winds or perhaps of sea straining through shingle. Alongside this romantic mood is the prevailing physicality of the work. Breda Ennis appears to match the intensity of the vision with an energetic and passionate gestural line that is without hesitation in its execution. these gestures are interspersed with marks that are both subtle and firm and often of opposite or different colour. There is a sense of recklessness in the way that the individual gestures are made and the immediate impression is that reconciliation of the component marks and gestures seems unlikely -but in fact the paintings gel into a coherence that defies expectation. Breda Ennis is risking more than ever before, this bold and direct series of works are subtle strong luscious and fresh as the wind. These are romantic and moving statements.

These paintings employ a variety of mediums – pastels and paints of different types though this never becomes a predictable way of illustrating some kind of technical wizardry, the process is always clear in its facture. The pace is varied and in some works the sparseness of a branch form occupies a nervous and spindly position in the centre of the paintings, these paintings can have a more virtual interpretation and are like figure ground compositions that present these branches which act as armatures for gesture and as gifts or bouquets. The grounds in Breda Ennis’s paintings are crucial they are often warm and rich and they are the soup from which these gestures sink into or emerge from. They are accrued through a layering process. It is this ground that holds the paintings in place and insures that the diving and swirling of the gestures are held in and made coherent in their classical informality.

These paintings lie in the heart of painting territory. The gestural handling feels fresh despite the long history of this genre partly due to the time we are in and partly due to the timelessness and everyday nature of these paintings and their unashamed pursuit of beauty. What has emerged here in for example painting entitled ‘Il Vento in Mezzo’ or ‘A drink of spring’ is that the colour is showing real radiance and surprise -there is real risk here and many subtle chords of colour. Breda Ennis has become a passionate colourist and these works have become both a diary of her world and an evocation of joy.

Andrew Stahl

Head of Undergraduate Painting
The Slade School of Fine Art of The University of London.