Today we’d like to introduce you to John Mulvany.
Hi John, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Born and raised in Ireland, I have lived in Austin for the past 27 years. I graduated from the College of Art, Design and Print in Dublin before completing a degree in art and design education at the Crawford College of Art in Cork. I have worked as an artist and art educator throughout my adult life.
As an artist, I work primarily in painting, and my work has been exhibited in galleries across Texas, Ireland, Germany, and the UK, including the Texas Biennial. Over the past 25 years, I have shown work regularly in solo and group exhibitions, including at grayDUCK Gallery, the Dougherty Arts Center, Texas Lutheran University, ICOSA Gallery, and Gallery Urbane in Marfa.
I have taught studio art at Headwaters School for 18 years and live in East Austin.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Honestly, I don’t think the road is smooth for anybody trying to make a life in the arts. Moving to another country as an adult has its own unique challenges, but it has also provided new opportunities. When I first moved to the US, I knew nobody in the art world and had to slowly find other artists and, eventually, opportunities to show my work. In addition to pursuing an art career, I also had to find gainful employment to support myself.
I had experience, interest, and skills as an educator, and within a year of moving to Austin, I got a position teaching art at a small school, where I worked for 8 years before finding Headwaters School, which was trying to grow its art department.
During this time, I found a studio and immersed myself in the art community in East Austin and started to exhibit my work. I also helped start an art magazine with a group of other artists, which we published for several years.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I am primarily a painter and have had a studio in East Austin for many years. As an art educator I have had to develop knowledge, skills and experience in a wide range of art practices that are outside my own personal interest in painting and drawing.
My painting has evolved over the years but I have always been drawn to subjects and themes from my everyday experience of life. For several years I have been making paintings from and about my neighborhood in East Austin. In 2019 I was preparing for a solo exhibition at grayDUCK gallery in Austin. My initial intention was to use the neighborhood as an allegory for this particular point in our country’s history. Throughout the last 10 years in America there has been an acute sense of a convulsive national identity-crisis. The current social and political moment encapsulated by the Pandora’s Box opened by the 2016 election made us wake up and pay attention like never before. Were we asleep? Maybe. We are certainly awake now. Our obsession is with the carnivalesque horror-show of our national politics when, what we really need to pay attention to is our community, our immediate environment and our immediate moment. It seems impossible to be a thinking, engaged artist without grappling with the current moment. The anxiety about the news cycle amplifies both our appreciation for the immediate beauty of our environment and the sense that we might have screwed it all up already. The schizophrenia of intense appreciation and regret. Much of contemporary life is played out through our screens, scrolled through with compulsive anxiety and impatience. Art in general and painting particularly invites us to look slowly, to engage fully with our minds and our hearts.
Everything in life is present in the neighborhood. If you are inclined to walk around with your eyes and senses open you notice things you might otherwise miss. A dead grackle in the road, the unkempt beauty of east-side Austin backyards, the violent magenta-pink veil of cherry blossom enveloping a vacant house, kids sitting on an abandoned couch in the woods, a cockroach carried away by ants, a lime-green lizard on the shed door and his dried-up ghost in the wall. All of these subjects blend together into the paintings.
Do you have any advice for those just starting out?
I think that as artists we are naturally inclined to be solitary creatures. I do think it is important to immerse yourself in a community though and to make the effort to find other artists to connect with. Young artists can help support each other, go to each other’s shows and find opportunities for collaboration. Do as much work as possible while you are young and have the energy- we tend to assume that we will always have more time to do our work but the demands on our time and energy compound over time.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.johnmulvany.com
- Instagram: @johnmulvanystudio
