Artwork Description

Oil on canvas · 121.9 × 121.9 cm (48 × 48 in) · signed "H. Gailey" lower right 

A large, atmospheric lyrical abstraction. From a dark, smouldering ground of aubergine, umber and bruised plum, a luminous burst erupts across the centre of the canvas in impasto whites, cadmium reds, warm ochres and cool touches of cobalt, troweled and scraped into a dense, jewelled passage. Fine rivulets of paint run down from it like rain, so the image reads at once as light breaking through darkness and as a bouquet dissolving into weather.

The handling carries the picture. The thin, veiled washes and drips of the lower half are set against the thick, worked impasto of the central explosion, and that contrast of transparency and density gives the surface real depth and drama. It belongs to the Romantic, gesture-led strain of lyrical abstraction, painting understood as a controlled act of atmosphere rather than depiction.

At 122 by 122 centimetres this is a genuine statement canvas, square and richly worked, with the tonal sophistication and central luminosity to carry a room on its own. Little is documented of the painter, whose work reaches the market chiefly through private and estate hands; the canvas is left to speak for itself, and it does.