Spiralling

Once in Europe, most of RP Browne’s efforts were direct­ed to his oth­er pas­sion, archi­tec­ture. Still, the artist man­aged to com­plete a new series, revolv­ing around spi­rals and shells. The paint­ings in this new peri­od con­trast sharply with pre­vi­ous series in terms of sim­plic­i­ty and tone; less som­bre. Work­ing on a small­er for­mat (60 x 60 cm) giv­en spa­tial and time con­straints, the artist refined his tech­nique while revis­it­ing his pri­ma­ry sur­re­al­ist influences.

The paint­ings were shown in Dublin’s leg­endary 5 m², a col­lec­tive exhi­bi­tion in July 2008 — La Cat­e­dral Stu­dios, where the artists (involv­ing painters, pho­tog­ra­phers, musi­cians, dancers, per­form­ers) were giv­en 5 m²  of walls or floor upon which to dis­play their art. Among oth­ers exhibit­ing were Jeanne Mer­er, Enda Cavanagh and Julia Friese.

Except for a few orig­i­nals, most of the pieces of this series are now in pri­vate col­lec­tions in Dublin, Lon­don and Paris.