My good friend and fellow artist Gordon Frickers is staying with me for a couple of weeks before he returns to his studio in France. It is always good to have the lad around, it provides us with an opportunity to discuss our new work and plan our future developments for life and careers.

Gordon has kindly offered to write my biography for my present exhibition. I have uploaded his section on Blastos-Bolbos.



This maturation in Folley’s painting can be attributed to his interest in philosophical concepts. As a result of studies at Middlesex University his work has shifted from Figurative to a Sensibilia-Abstraction.

Folley makes the distinction between Sensibilia and Abstraction by acknowledging the latter’s ‘vagueness of generalities’; and the former as a view of the world as it is for the individual – those things which each one of us sense, as immediate objects of our sense-perception. Folley’s Sensibilia-Abstraction questions the spectators’ concept of Truth by removing their preconscious learned narrative logic; in doing so – the spectator’s assurance and reliance upon nostalgia becomes distorted.

Folley is exhibiting three works reflecting from his new series, Blastos-Bolbos: ‘A Purple Anaesthetist’. Blastos-Bolbos (Blastos is Greek for germ and Bolbos means onion) was chosen by the painter to describe this series because after germination an onion develops multiple layers. This “discovery of knowing” continues Folley’s exploration into the symbiotic relationships between: the work, the painter and the viewers’ responses.

Gordon Frickers May 2010