"The eighties prove to be the most important decade for Fahey's development as an artist in terms of technical choice leading to variation in style. Here we see a shift of texture and experimentation with surface and material; evidence of an evolving artist honing his technique. This group of paintings address the need to reach out to modern surroundings and the raw need to create in a beautiful fury of florescence, sand induced textures, and massive strokes studying movement in temporal surroundings. We even begin to see stylistic motifs appear which play an integral role in narration and dictation in even Fahey's most recent works today: small cross outs, hashing, and layering giving way to what later becomes veils, washouts, and curtains meant to be drawn back- or not."
