Threshold

Artbooth Gallery is pleased to announce Threshold, a solo exhibition by Irish painter Richard Hearns, on view from November 6 through December 6, 2025. This marks Hearns’ first solo exhibition in the UAE, presenting a body of work that reflects his ongoing exploration of gesture, memory, and place.

Working from his studio in the Burren, County Clare, Ireland, Richard Hearns is celebrated for both his figurative still life paintings and large scale gestural abstractions. His practice is rooted in physicality and mark making that seeks connection, vitality, and the presence of life energy. Balancing discipline with spontaneity, his paintings combine structured compositions with bold gestures, where charcoal lines carve space and prismatic color opens realms of possibility.

Born in Beirut in 1980 and adopted into Ireland, Hearns carries a dual heritage that profoundly shapes his artistic identity. His work emerges between cultures and histories, forming a distinctive visual language that draws inspiration from the raw, ancient landscapes of the Burren. The land’s geological wildness, soft contours, and rhythms reverberate through his paintings, which embody both restraint and freedom raw emotion counterbalanced by precision.

Threshold presents Hearns’ most recent body of work, developed following Nexus, a commissioned painting for Dublin City University. In these new canvases, Hearns engages with the idea of thresholds through imaginary landscapes. Improvisation, layering, and revision are integral to his process, where the presence of pentimento traces of prior marks and decisions becomes visible, revealing the evolution of thought and movement.

With a heightened sensitivity to color, light, and scale, Hearns’ paintings evoke a sense of wonder and transcendence. They invite viewers to cross into realms beyond the everyday, offering a visceral encounter with the fundamental act of creation itself.

Hearns’ career has been marked by a number of notable exhibitions at institutions and galleries including Jorgensen Gallery (Dublin), Cadogan Gallery (London & Milan), The Sheen Center for Thought and Culture (New York), and All Saints Gallery (California), The Exum Gallery, Tennessee & Sotheby’s (London). His works are represented in prominent international collections both public and private such as Dublin City University, the Irish State Collection, Galgorm Group (Northern Ireland), St. Adare Manor (Ireland) Patrick’s Cathedral (New York City), Naomi House Children’s Hospice (UK), Aston Wealth Management (Ireland), ITC Company (Ireland), and Sepil (Ireland & The Netherlands).

“I listen closely,” Hearns reflects. “A painting tells me when it’s done. I rarely retouch a piece that whispers ‘complete.’”

Through Threshold, Artbooth Gallery invites audiences to engage with this dialogue of energy, gesture, and memory an exhibition that celebrates painting as both an intimate and expansive act of being.