Tom Climent: Cork artist in demand as colourful canvases trip the light fantastic  

With his star very much on the rise, Climent says his Spanish heritage and his visits to West Cork feature among the inspirations for his distinctive pieces 

Tom Climent with one of his pieces at the exhibition at the Lavit Gallery in Cork. 

In dreams, there are landscapes like a Tom Climent painting: composite realms constructed of places we remember, imbued with surreal qualities. In reality, we can finally go and stand in front of artworks again. It still feels quite surreal to be standing with the Cork artist in the Lavit Gallery, in front of one of his highly-coloured canvases, A Fertile Land.

Up close, the texture is slightly rough in places; Climent’s media include sand and plaster alongside oils. Stand back, and it’s an abstract landscape populated with geometric forms in brilliant hues.

“I’m not sure I’d call myself a landscape painter, but I’ve used landscape as a way of grounding the paint, providing a way into the paintings,” says Climent, who cuts a contrastingly monochrome figure against his work in dark jeans, jacket and matching black face mask. 

“I’m trying to invite people into these places, through colour and planes and perspective.

“To me, this one is a little like the Beara peninsula, where I spent time last summer. I do take photographs and have them in the studio, but I don’t try to use them in a representational way: the paintings act a sponge and absorb places I’ve seen and places I’d like to go.” 

Climent’s father is Spanish and he lived there briefly as a child, maintaining a connection to Spain throughout his life. His vivid-hued paintings are hardly reflective of the Irish palette of greens and greys: is he painting Spain, too?

“I think it has a definite impact on my relationship with light and colour: that intensity of light you see in the Spanish landscape,”  says the artist who mainly grew up in Beaumont and Douglas, and attended St Francis College in Rochestown. 

“I can see the imprint of places that I’ve been to, but really I’m trying to capture something that’s just out of reach, that’s kind of magic as well. These things exist that we can’t put words on but that we all feel is there. Something spiritual that there’s no explanation for.” 

Tom Climent at work. 

He talks about the idea of a prism, about splitting light into colours. In earlier iterations in his career as a painter, Climent spent long periods absorbed in perfecting painting techniques used by the old masters; like all painters he is, he says, essentially concerned with capturing light.

“These geometric shapes represent the prism to me, and are a way to explore light through colour,” he says. “I always imagine that I’m trying to capture light itself, by splitting it and using the colour spectrum as a representation of light.” 

If this sounds like a rather scientific approach for a painter who often describes his practice as largely intuitive, it’s a duality Climent readily acknowledges. 

“I loved science when I was school, and I think that order and structure is coming out in my work now. Both things are there: structure, logic and order, but also chance and accident.” 

Alongside Climent’s prismatic shards of colour, there’s also his frequent use of gold.

“It’s symbolic of the sun, and to do with alchemy and change,” he says. “I see it within the work as this power source, this gateway to something else, to a sense of magic.” 

This is the second time he’s mentioned magic. Does he believe in magic?

“When you work creatively, I think you have to,” he says. “You’re opening yourself up to things that you can’t control. It’s not necessarily related to being an artist, but I think people experience these things in their lives that are a connection to something else. In my working day, I try to let that be there all the time, to create the space to allow it to come in.”

 This show, Forgotten Shores, features  a series of paintings that make up a definite epoch in Climent’s career, a move away from earlier more figurative work, with a more muted palette.

Eden, one of his large canvases in this vein, has recently been purchased by the Crawford Art Gallery, as part of a €400,000 spend on expanding the national collection. Climent’s painting will soon grace the walls of Cork’s National Cultural Institution, and be seen by its many annual visitors.

For the artist, it’s an affirmation: “It’s like recognition that you’ve been doing this for a while now, and that it’s accepted of you. Having a piece in a public collection means a lot more people will see it. It’s an honour, in a sense.” 

But Climent has been quietly working away for a quarter of a century, managing to pull off the rare feat of having worked as a full-time professional artist ever since his graduation from the Crawford College of Art and Design 25 years ago. His studio is in Cork city centre, near Sullivan’s Quay.

Climent studied engineering in Cork Regional Technical College (now MTU) when he left school. But he took night classes in the Crawford College of Art and Design and eventually found himself immersed in art and made the switch, ditching his engineering degree in favour of Fine Art with the support of his parents.

Tom Climent, and fellow artist Debbie Godsell, stand by his piece Eden, which was recently purchased by the Crawford Art Gallery in Cork.  Picture: Michael Mac Sweeney/Provision

Since graduating in 1995 – he returned and completed a Masters a decade later – he has had varying degrees of commercial success. It hasn’t always been a perfectly smooth path, he acknowledges.

“It’s been up and down at times,” he says. “You have to be resilient in some way, and stubborn too. You have to feel that if things are not going that well with the work or financially, it will improve. And you have to keep thinking like that. It’s like tightrope walking: just don’t look down, it’s one step at a time."

Climent credits his family and other people around him for their support through the years. 

“There are people who have encouraged my work and bought it and held exhibitions, and you need that support. Now, through the Crawford, there’s more interest in my work. It’s like a spotlight is put on your work for a while.”

 The additional exposure since the Crawford acquisition may well add to Climent’s growing reputation as an artist, and ultimately, to the prices he can command for his work. Which currently range from €14,000 for A Fertile Land, the largest canvas on display, down to €800 for some of the smallest. Is additional commercial clout welcome?

He shrugs. “I don’t really think about them selling, but they have to sell too, or I wouldn’t be able to keep doing it,” he says. “It’s there and I can’t avoi

d it, but I don’t worry about it too much.” One thing he’s not going to do is allow recent recognition to force him to reproduce more of the same, or to cement his style. He’s still changing, and moving forward, and the paintings are right there with him.

“For me, the sense of being on a journey with the paintings is very true: you don’t feel alone,” he says. “I’m in a relationship with the work that I make.

“I’m introducing more organic shapes now. I wanted to make a change from the very geometric shapes and I got thinking about the shapes of leaves and flowers and the shape of trees, and that kind of softness I wanted to bring in: something to do with growth and regrowth.

“I’ve always embraced change and I don’t even have much control over it. I’m happy to work like this for a while, but it will evolve and move and grow.” 

• Further Shores by Tom Climent is at the Lavit Gallery until  May 22.  https://lavitgallery.com