Sean Scully – The Nature of Art | Lisson Gallery
Sean Scully uses shiny strokes of glossy oil paint on a tough, shiny aluminium backing to create works of considerable heft. Abstract Expressionism, and its presiding deity Mark Rothko, is an obvious influence. But Irish-born Scully is more down-to-earth and less mournfully spiritual than his American predecessor.
I saw, and was moved by, a collection of his blue-hued works at Thaddeus Ropac in Paris last year. Then, he advised visitors to listen to Unchained Melody while they looked (lonely rivers running to the sea, to the sea). This time, at Lisson Gallery in London, he tells us of “the endless redrawn shoreline”. It makes sense: Rothko’s horizontal bands suggested something celestial, galactic; Scully is constantly aware of the natural world around him.
The line about the shoreline is contained in a recent sketchbook entry, on display at Lisson among a range of drawings, watercolours, photos and written works on paper from Scully’s decades of practice. There’s another wall of his photographs of stone walls from the island of Aran. And, best of all, a pair of his oil paint-on-aluminium abstracts: both recent.
It’s the central works I found myself calmed and drawn in by. The skylight teased out the individual brush strokes. I felt calmed, as before, by the pure play of colour and texture. Nothing more, nothing needed. An endless redrawn shoreline.
Sean Scully – The Nature of Art is at Lisson Gallery (London). 18 February -11 April 2026