The name William Crozier is virtually synonymous with colour. His west Cork landscapes are alive with brilliant reds and yellows, luscious pinks and oranges, deep, intense blues and greens. Unlikely, you may think, particularly in a year dominated by the fashionable grey of the Irish weather. But, as he once wrote about seeing a neighbour's field in Cork: "All the spectrum was there in that landscape. It was glowing, radiant."
There is colour aplenty in his two current exhibitions in Dublin, at the Taylor Galleries and the Graphic Studio Gallery, but in much of the work he eschews chromatic delights in favour of simple black and white. This was not a response to the vagaries of the climate. "In fact, I work in black and white every day, but I've shown relatively few of them anywhere, and none in Ireland, so I thought it was time."
Strange to relate, the pictures don't feel as if they are in black and white. That is to say, they never look as if he's forgotten to colour them in. Sometimes, until he goes and checks it, he is himself convinced a particular black and white painting is actually in colour.
Crozier was born in Glasgow in 1930 to parents who, he has remarked "were more Scottish than Irish when they were not being more Irish than Scottish". It is tempting to see him as continuing the tradition of the Scottish colourists, but in fact he is very much a free, cosmopolitan spirit, and has spent time in many countries, including France, Spain and the US. In the mid 1950s he worked for several years in Dublin designing and painting sets at the Olympia and the Theatre Royal - surely a significant experience for him, when you consider the decisive, boldly stated, painterly style of his maturity. Though he and his wife Catherine lived and worked for many years in England, and still spend about half the year in Hampshire, Ireland is his adopted home more or less since they bought a cottage near Ballydehob, Co Cork, in 1983. And west Cork has proved to be an unending source of inspiration.
Avowedly impatient with certain aspects of printmaking, he has managed to work very successfully with print, notably at the Graphic Studio in Dublin, and his show there is an impressive survey of six years' output. For his show at the Taylor Galleries, the walls have been painted a soft, off-white grey. He suggested the possibility to the galleries' co-owner, John Taylor, when he saw his paintings against the same subdued tone at his house in Hampshire. To his delight, John was extremely enthusiastic.
The result is so subtle that at first glance you may not even notice any difference, but it works brilliantly, and it makes the exhibition the first William Crozier show that will be remembered for its black, white and grey.
William Crozier: A Greater Garden is at the Taylor Galleries and William Crozier at Graphic Studio Workshop 1992-1998 is at the Graphic Studio Gallery. Both shows continue until November 28th
Easter Field, an oil on canvas by William Crozier, part of his exhibition, A Greater Garden, at the Taylor Galleries until November 28th