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Born in Washington, DC of parents from Ireland and Madeira, Francis Toohey grew up in the Boston area. He studied Fine Arts at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston where he received senior Honors in both painting and creative writing from 1977 through 1992, Toohey has exhibited and worked in Boston and Cap Cod’s famous art colony, Provincetown. He was a Boston newspaper columnist and entertainment reporter for over a decade. He has received two grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council for two books of poetry and art. All his published work has been collected by the New York Public Library in 2001 where it is listed as the Francis Toohey Papers.” My paintings gather together the visual material that most strikes my eyes and moves the music in my brush. Abstract Expressionism-my painting traditional-is built about paint itself and recording how it moves. Everything I paint already exists outside me, the colored rectangles of the neighbor’s houses, the big bright blossoms in my garden, the elegant energetic line of street graffiti, the insistent printed letters from tattered posters. Moreover, my hearts awareness of my colonial’s world can’t help but invite all of it inside me. But the wonder, for me, comes when what is inside returns transformed into paint on a canvas. A Gift.” |
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