This document provides an overview of artist Leonard Sheil's body of work centered around the sea. For over 20 years, most of his work has related in some way to the vast, deep, and powerful sea. His pieces attempt to capture how the sea represents both confinement and freedom for humanity. Many also commemorate those who have been lost at sea through shipwrecks and drownings. The document outlines several of Sheil's major pieces and exhibitions, as well as includes photos of his mixed media works incorporating painting, printmaking, film, and photography.

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SEA CHANGE
Leonard Sheil
Droichead Arts Centre
Drogheda, County Louth, Ireland

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SEA CHANGE
Forward
Leonard Sheil 5
Watching all directions
Prof. Ciarán Benson 7
A thin skin
Paul Mosse 9
Submersion
Ciara Ferguson 11
Two living environments
Michaela Seif 15
Sea Change 17
Short biography and exhibitions 31

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SEA CHANGE
For the past 20 years most of my work has in some way been related
to the sea. How does this vast space that is deep, grave, old, over-
whelming and sublime relate to the human condition? The sea is a
symbol of both confinement and freedom.
It is also a place of tragedy. People will always work, play, swim and eat
from it . To move over it, stay above it ,or vanish in it, has echoes of
eternity. It represents a freedom that is a way “out”, an escape, a transit
route to dissolve from this world.
Every stretch of coastline has its own history of wrecks and drowning.
Every cemetery has stories and memorials to those who have no bodies
left to bury. Memorials of those lost to the sea are few, but are often
monuments placed away from communities.
This work does not mourn the sea-dead, but commemorates those lost
to the sea. It does not alter any sea tragedy, but merely indicates its
occurrence.
“Icons express things in themselves invisible ,and render them really
present, visible and active“ Vladimir Lossky
One section of this exhibition, the series “Icons for lost fishermen”are
dedicated to all of the victims of the sea.
They attempt to present lives with all their hardships without any
romanticism. The profile emerges as a matter of extraction from the
surface. Their Faces - an identity - escapes them. The suggestion is to
wonder about identity.
Larger works,for example Limbo attempt to deal with the Ocean as an
engulfing transitory space, from known position to unknown destination.
For those using it as a route that becomes a final resting or Ruhestätte -
meaning last home.
Leonard Sheil
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Watching all directions
There is a distinctive kind of respectful helplessness felt by those whose
working world is the sea. No such worker has any illusions about its
overwhelming power. It tells them it is best to work with, and risky in the
extreme to work against, its power. Acceptance is their watchword, and a
stoic courage their response. I recently found an account of a great storm
in the 1870s that destroyed the living quarters of the lighthouse-keepers
in Belmullet on Ireland’s west coast. They survived the waves crashing in
through their roof that dark turbulent night.
One of my great-grandfathers – from a line of nineteenth century
Doldrums
mixed media on canvas triptych
240 x 100 cm 2008-2010
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A thin skin
Some personal thoughts about the sea.
My family was fearful of the sea. I can still see my father, a passenger,
crouching low down in an 18 ft sailing boat and grasping the gunwale
in a gale. Those teenage burning days at the seaside when I really wanted
to be at home shooting pigeons off the corn.
At 20 years old, hauling the body of a heart attack victim ashore on
a lonely Kerry beach - a long term haunting.
The ocean is the big and generous farm with no need for maintenance but
which we still manage to abuse.
The fearsome Maelstroms. It also seems the life and well being
of the sea depends on this activity, in a lesser form, in order to mix the
different water layers.
The Abyss. Those deep chasms cutting
Sanctuary
mixed media on canvas triptych
240 x 100 cm 2009 -2011
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Submersion
On the Southwest coast of Africa is a long desolate stretch of Namibia
known as the Skeleton Coast, for the hundreds of shipwrecks that have
been washed up there at the edge of the desert over centuries.
It is a fog shrouded, lonely, inhospitable and inaccessible stretch of the
Atlantic Ocean. In Dun Laoghaire harbour near where artist Leonard Sheil
grew up, beautiful sailboats line the marina, their rigging flapping against
the wind. The two sides of the sea, life giver and life taker.
The Sea is a force of nature that has always had a mesmerising hold on
human beings. It used to be an important means to explore and discover,
to trade and to transit. It knows no boundaries but its own, and even then,
a tsunami is always possible. Long ago they thought if you sailed to the
horizon you would fall off the edge of earth. In some ways this is the vast
ocean and the edge that Sheil navigates in
Stories about navigating
mixed media on canvas diptych
300 x 140 cm 2013-2014
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Icon for lost fisherman III
mixed media on driftwood
30 x 26cm 2000-2010

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Icon for lost fisherman I
mixed media on driftwood
30 x 26cm 2000-2010

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Mythical wreck
mixed media on canvas triptych
426 x 122 cm 1997-2007
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SEA CHANGE
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Parallel Line Search
Digital mixed media print on Chromaluxe Aluminium
30 x 40 cm 2015-17 18

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Sector Search
Digital mixed media print on Chromaluxe Aluminium
30 x 40 cm 2015-17
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Creeping Line Search
Digital mixed media print on Chromaluxe Aluminium
30 x 40 cm 2015-17 20

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Uncertain
Mixed media,sea salt on canvas
80 x 100 cm 2014-15 22

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Unsafe
Mixed media,sea salt on canvas
80 x 100 cm 2014-1523

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Unconfirmed
Mixed media,sea salt on canvas
80 x 100 cm 2014-15 24

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Limbo- Vergessenheit
Diptych mixed media on canvas
140 x 300 cm 201525

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Sea scan 1 (Triptych)
Mixed media on canvas
40 x 40cm 2012-1427

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Tidal Race
Mixed media on paper on board
37 x 37cm cm 2007-08 28

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Beyond III
Mixed media on paper on board
37 x 37cm cm 2004-08

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Doldrums
detail

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Leonard Sheil
A degree in graphic design1984 at IADT Dublin.
Initially worked as a graphic artist, in Dublin and then in London
as a set painter, at the National Theatre Southbank .
Awarded a scholarship in 1985 to study at the
Beijing Language Institute,and the Central Academy of Fine Art China.
In 1995 he was selected as voyage artist and quartermaster for
Tim Severin's 'Spice Islands Voyage'. The voyage covered 2,500 miles in six
months in a specially constructed traditional vessel, sailing among the
eastern islands of Indonesia. Sheil illustrated the book of the adventure.
In 1998 he was an Irish representative to the International Watercolour
Symposium Latvia. He was awarded best conceptual work.
In 2005 and 2006 he was artist in residence at Krems, The Factory, Lower
Austria. In 2006 had his first solo exhibition in Austria at the Gallery
Kuntsverein Baden .
In 2004 he produced his first short film - KISH - A short experimental
documentary, about the Kish lighthouse in Dublin Bay. In 2006 his second
film 'Hermitage' was about Skellig Michael, an important spiritual retreat and
settlement of 6th century ascetic monks. It was first shown publicly at the
Kerry Film Festival.
In 2014 Leonard was elected the first Irish member of Kunstverein Baden,
established in 1924, one of the oldest in Austria.
He lives and works in Vienna, Austria and Co.Wicklow, Ireland.
www.leonardsheil.com

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Awards
2006 Culture Ireland Bursary The Anatomy of Territory- Kunstverein Baden, Austria.
2005 Artist-in-residence at ‘The Factory’, Kunsthalle Krems Austria.
2004 Residency at Cill Rialaig Project, Co.Kerry.
1998 Arts Council Artflight, Latvia ‘Ceisis 98’ Watercolour Symposium.
Best conceptual works ‘Ceisis 98’ Watercolour Symposium.
1986 Dept. of Education Scholarship to Beijing, PRC Language Institute.
Beijing Academy of Fine Art,China. Printmaking.
Film
2013 Reggio Film Festival,Italy.
2012 ‘Lange Nacht des Film Festival’ Galerie Blaugelbezwettl, Zwettl, Austria.
2006 "Hermitage" nominated for Samhlaiocht Kerry Film Festival.
Collections
Allied Irish Bank ,Guinness Ireland Ltd.,Trinity College Dublin,St. Patrick’s College.Dublin
Private collections UK, France, Austria, Germany, USA, Australia, China, Indonesia.
Represented by
PContemporary Galerie Michaela Seif, Vienna. Austria.
Galerie Gut Gasteil, Prigglitz. Austria
The Catherine Hammond Gallery Ireland
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Photography / Layout / Design Ulla Reithmayr
© 2017 Leonard Sheil all rights reserved
Printed in Germany