There is a particular moment in this job that never gets old: the crate comes off the van, the screws come out, and you get the first proper look at a piece you have only ever seen as a photograph. That happened this week with Maple, the latest original to arrive from Joe Galindo — a brown and white cow, painted at a scale that lets her hold a wall on her own.
Look at the eyes
If you know Galindo's work you will know where this is going. The eyes are the thing. He paints reflections into them — light, shapes, the suggestion of a world outside the frame — and it is what lifts his animals out of straightforward portraiture into something that genuinely looks back at you. Maple is no exception. It is the detail we find ourselves pointing out to everyone who stops in front of her, and it is the detail a photograph never quite carries.
About the piece
Maple is mixed media on board, 76cm square in the image and framed out to 96.6cm overall. She is signed by the artist and comes with a full certificate of authenticity.
The surface is built up in layers, and there is a real physicality to the mark-making. Stand back and she resolves — the soft brown and white of her coat, the weight of her. Step in close and it breaks apart into gesture and texture. That shift is the whole pleasure of the thing, and it is the reason we would always rather you came and looked at one than bought it off a screen.
A word on Joe Galindo
Galindo was born in Mirfield, West Yorkshire in 1994 and drew obsessively as a child. At 24 he put the brush down entirely and went to work abroad — a gap that, by his own account, did more for his eye than carrying on would have. When he came back to painting he brought a bolder, more confident way of seeing with him, and it shows in the work he is making now.
We have carried Galindo for a few years and the pattern is always the same. The originals do not hang about. Each one is a single piece, so once she goes, the only route to something similar is a commission or the wait for the next delivery.
Come and see her
Maple is hanging at our Callender Street gallery now. You are very welcome to drop in — and if you are making a special journey, give us a ring first so we can be sure she is out and lit properly for you rather than half behind something else.
We have been selling art in Belfast since 1982, and the part we still enjoy most is putting the right piece in front of the right person. If Maple is not quite it, tell us what you are after. There is usually something in the back we have not got round to hanging yet.
