Tom Climent

Tom Climent is a painter based in Cork City, Ireland. He is a graduate of the Crawford College of Art and Design where he received a B.A in 1995 and a Masters by Research in 2011. His work over the last twenty five years or so has varied from paintings of figurative, urban and landscape subjects. His current work is mostly geometric in nature and investigates the boundaries between abstraction and representation.

Referencing ideas of place, various types of structures and natural phenomena, the compositions range from the visually complex to simple basic structures. By the manipulation of the materials, scale and weight of these structures, Climent tries to obscure their basic properties and any identifiable purpose. It suggests a narrative but never actually reveals what that might be.

“The way I work is largely intuitive, painting for me starts a process of discovering unintended connections and relationships, of trying to search for reason and meaning in each work that emerges. The first marks and shapes create the environment for a process that requires me to constantly re-evaluate what’s important so I can find out what the painting will be. I feel as if I’m in a relationship with the painting, it guides me as much as I control it.”

He exhibits with Solomon Fine Art in Dublin. His work has been selected for the annual exhibitions at the RHA and RUA. He has been selected for the Oriel Davis Open at the Oriel Davis Gallery in Wales and the ARTWORKS and HORTONS PRIZE at VISUAL in Carlow. In Spring 2016 he took part in Irish Wave, a collaborative exhibition in Shanghai and Beijing. In 2019 he was invited to take part in Youyi, the visual art section of the celebration of 40 years of diplomatic relations between Ireland and China. The exhibition traveled from Hangzhou to Shanghai and Beijing.

He has participated in group exhibitions in London with the Herrick Gallery and in New York with the J. Cacciola Gallery and The Painting Center.

He is also a recipient of the Heinrich Boll Cottage Residency, a Ballinglen Arts Foundation Fellowship, Cork City Council Individual Artists Bursary Award 2014, Working Art Grant 2014, Tony O’Malley Travel Award, Victor Treacy Award and a Department of Foreign Affairs Travel Award.

His work is in the collections of The Central Bank, The National Treasury Management Agency, University College Cork, University College Dublin, University of Limerick, Smurfit Business School, AIB Bank, The National Self-Portrait Collection of Ireland, NCB Stockbrokers, The Cork Opera House, Cork City Council, The Office of Public Works, Cork Institute of Technology, The American Embassy in Dublin, Deloitte, Investec, Allianz, Ibec and private collections in Ireland, UK, Spain, France, USA & Canada.

Artist Statement

Over my time as an artist the work I have produced has been structured into groups or series of paintings. This current series is mostly geometric in nature and has an overall landscape structure to it, but it also contains softer, textured pieces that operate as a compliment to the more brightly colored abstract ones. My work generally tends to be suggestive, I feel it absorbs places I’ve been to, experiences I’ve had and ideas and images I come across. My process of painting embraces both logic and reason and also chance and accident.

I allow myself to be guided by each individual piece. The work itself exists on the borderline between abstraction and representation but also between real and spirit worlds. It allows for magic to have a role its creation. I want my work to operate as a doorway, to invite the viewer into a new space, to offer an invitation to journey.