a whole string of failures, 2025
acrylic on polyester
140 x 110 cm / 55.1 x 43.3 in
A figure lies among scattered books, face hidden, posture abandoned. The painting is quiet but not still—it hums with the weight of someone who has let go, who can no longer hold themselves up. Books and papers surround them, remnants of thought, of effort, of trying to make sense of things. But sense has slipped away. What remains is simply a body, resting in the debris of its own concentration.
Without a face, the figure refuses to meet us. We are left outside, looking in on something private, something not meant to be seen. The perspective from above intensifies this trespass: we see everything except the one thing that might explain it. The painting holds its secret close.
And yet, in that withholding, it makes space for us. The figure becomes anyone who has ever needed to stop, to lie down, to let the world continue without them. The books no longer demand to be read. The papers wait. For a moment, nothing is required except this: to be held by the ground, by the quiet, by the knowledge that even in disappearing, we are still here.
Lee Welch was born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1975 and currently lives and works in Dublin, Ireland. Welch creates gestural, atmospheric paintings that attest to the psychical and emotional depths of his chosen subjects and map out delicate negotiations between beauty, desire, and the painted image. Depicting figures from his own milieu, as well as from history, literature, music, and tennis, Welch finds feeling in that which he depicts, always rendered with the intensity of his particular humanism; a close looking akin to love. In each subject’s specificity, the artist reveals the universal feelings that connect us to each other, and that stretch from our present moment back through time.
Welch received his BFA from the National College of Art and Design in 2009 and his MFA from Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam in 2011. Currently based at the dlr Baths Artist Studios, he has previously held residencies at NCAD, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, and the Banff Centre for Arts, the latter supported by the Arts Council.
Welch received his BFA from the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) in 2009 and his MFA from Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam in 2011. He has since been widely exhibited internationally and received numerous awards. Recent exhibitions have taken place at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Michigan State University; Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León (MUSAC), León, Spain; Glucksman Gallery, Cork; Objectif Exhibitions, Antwerp and Kerlin Gallery, Dublin. His paintings are in private and public collections such as the MB Art Foundation, the Arts Council, Hugh Lane Gallery, and the OPW - State Art Collection.
with support from the Arts Council of Ireland and dlr County Council