Category Archives: The Darkened Room

On View – Q Art Salon, Santa Ana, CA

Dark Skull 1000

Dark Skull • Joe Forkan 2015 Oil on Linen 20″ x 20″

Last year I began started teaching a drawing class on Heads and Hands at CSU Fullerton. I ordered a couple of skulls for the class, and had also been experimenting with some new paints (trying some different lead whites from several different makers – needing to find US sources now that the EU has gotten so skittish about lead white). So when the skulls arrived, I jumped into a couple paintings from them. I set up the first one in a very dark corner of my studio, and the second I placed near a north facing window, mostly just looking at color and form.

The paintings are largely about color, paint, and close looking.

These are 2 of the 3 paintings included in Fleshed Out, a group show at Q Art Salon, in Santa Ana, CA, on view from Dec. 5 – Jan. 1, 2016.

Skull-01-detail-1000 rev

Detail • Dark Skull • Joe Forkan 2015 Oil on Linen 20″ x 20″

Forkan_skull_02-10001 rev

Yellow Skull • Joe Forkan 2015 Oil on Linen 20″ x 20″

Solo Exhibition • The Higher Bridges Gallery, Enniskillen, Northern Ireland

Joe Forkan Einvite remix2

The Darkened Room opens today at the Higher Bridges Gallery in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland. The show is comprised of a series of figurative monotype triptychs and a video piece that combines dozens of monotypes, drawings and paintings into thousands of shifting images in a looping meditation on the complexities of memory. Below are a few examples, plus some details.

Elizabeth Portrait 09 • Joe Forkan 2013, monotype, 22" x 30"

Elizabeth Portrait 09 • Joe Forkan 2013, monotype, 22″ x 30″

detail • Elizabeth Portrait 09 • Joe Forkan 2013, monotype, 22" x 30"

detail • Elizabeth Portrait 09 • Joe Forkan 2013, monotype, 22″ x 30″

Elizabeth Portrait 03 • Joe Forkan 2013, monotype, 22" x 30"

Elizabeth Portrait 03 • Joe Forkan 2013, monotype, 22″ x 30″

detail • Elizabeth Portrait 03 • Joe Forkan 2013, monotype, 22" x 30"

detail • Elizabeth Portrait 03 • Joe Forkan 2013, monotype, 22″ x 30″

Elizabeth Portrait 01 • Joe Forkan 2013, monotype, 22" x 30"

Elizabeth Portrait 01 • Joe Forkan 2013, monotype, 22″ x 30″

detail • Elizabeth Portrait 01 • Joe Forkan 2013, monotype, 22" x 30"

detail • Elizabeth Portrait 01 • Joe Forkan 2013, monotype, 22″ x 30″