Intimacy Eclipso: Colour, Movement and the Story Behind the Dan’s Papers Cover

Oliver Peterson’s November 2024 interview in Dan’s Papers looks closely at Intimacy Eclipso, Ian James Roche’s 2017 pastel on sheetrock. Reproduced as cover art, the 8 x 4-foot painting becomes the starting point for a conversation about literature, intimacy, intuition and the physical realities of working large.

A literary image transformed into abstraction

Roche traces the painting’s beginning to a passage he encountered in Malachi Martin’s Hostage to the Devil. In his account, an image of Mary Magdalene washing Jesus’ feet suggested tenderness, intimacy and healing. The painting developed from his response to that image, rather than a need to reproduce a scene literally.

He also explains the second part of the title: the day he was finishing the piece coincided with the solar eclipse of 2017. “Eclipso” connects that event with his reflection on intimacy. These are the artist’s own associations, offering context without closing off other ways of experiencing the painting.

An exception within an intuitive practice

The interview identifies Intimacy Eclipso as one of two works for which Roche had made a preliminary sketch. Most of his paintings, he says, begin without an outline or a fixed image. That exception is useful: an intuitive practice can include different ways of beginning, even when the artist continues to let colour and form guide the work.

The Drawing Books section offers another view of drawing as a creative activity, while the pastel collection allows visitors to compare how distinct compositions emerge across the larger works.

The material demands of a large pastel painting

Peterson asks about sheetrock and the challenges of working at this scale. Roche describes moving long panels within a limited studio, the weight of framed pieces, and the effort involved in refining the shapes he makes with pastel. His process includes cleaning up and shaping forms, not only the initial spontaneity of putting colour down.

He links the material to the wall drawings that inspired him at Dia Beacon and to his father’s soft pastel work. The interview also discusses art as a way of understanding his own sensitivity and personal transformation. Those ideas belong to his lived experience, rather than a promise of a particular effect on every viewer.

See the full artwork before returning to the cover reproduction, and visit the Intimacy Eclipso print page for that format’s details. Ian’s biography and stories place this painting within a wider practice shaped by colour, movement and personal meaning.