Sean McMahon

Description

Painting

39" x 28"

Sean McMahon sees both his life ‘process’ and his artistic process as the same journey. Making art enables him to become more grounded and present, it is a meditation where he is able to move from his head into his body and heart. When he neglects his journey in making art, he says his life journey suffers. McMahon describes his artistic process as a

“journey towards presence, hindered by regret and anxiety”

For McMahon,drawing brings him into the present moment. ‘Regret’ refers to lost hope of past experiences and ‘anxiety’, an obsessive concern about the future.

“The struggle of being present with sometimes overwhelming hindrances from past and future is a struggle that I live with.”

McMahon’s choices of materials which are ‘sometimes permanent and sometimes ethereal’ in nature capture this idea. Furthermore, his process of drawing which allows for mistakes and reworking – building up of surfaces with ink, pen and charcoal and removals of marks with bleach, works as a metaphor for this psychological struggle. Abandoned buildings, dated machinery and post-industrial equipment that over time seems to have become redundant and lost their function are often the subject of McMahon’s artwork. Structures that are not brand new and look like they have a ‘story to tell' resonate with McMahon who says that:

“I see a little bit of myself in everything I draw”.

McMahon describes his work as an investigation of loneliness and isolation, referencing George Monbiot’s article ‘The age of loneliness is killing us’ which describes our current age of social isolation as one that is as potent a cause of death as smoking 15 cigarettes a day and twice as deadly as obesity.

About the Piece: It is a drawing of a selfie taken by the Curiosity Rover on Mars. What interested me enough to make that piece is an extraordinary effort it takes to get something like the rover to Mars and the scientific expertise in AI that it takes to allow it to operate under its own steam in many regards on another planet - and we go and get it to take a selfie. There's something about that which elevates the Curiosity Rover to a conscious being in my opinion."

http://seanmcmahon.gallery

http://south-african-mark.squarespace.com/#/sean-mcmahon-selfie-on-the-rocks/

Additional Information