Sea Star: Sean Scully at the National Gallery

Irish born artist Sean Scully deals in horizontals and verticals; his is an art of blocks, of rich colour and buttery paint. Although raised in London, he now lives in New York and is an heir to American abstraction and the colour field painters of the first half of the 20th century. But it is the work of JMW Turner, arguably the first abstract expressionist, who has inspired the bulk of his latest exhibition, opening at the National Gallery in April.

Turner’s hazy seascape The Evening Star (1830), housed in the gallery’s permanent collection, might not seem like an obvious starting point for the contemporary painter and printmaker, but the image is a pivotal one in the exhibition. Scully’s bands of colour evoke landscapes and horizons, and his checkerboards are inspired by the fields of his native Ireland. In recent years, Scully has also worked on aluminium and copper – surfaces that lend the paint an almost iridescent lustre, not unlike the effect found in many of Turner’s most evocative works.

This exhibition will be the latest in a series of shows exploring the continued relevance of the National Gallery’s collection to contemporary artists. In the past, Tacita Dean, Chris Ofili, Ed Ruscha, George Shaw and Bridget Riley have collaborated with the gallery.