The Mary Duffy exhibition, Wild Blue, at The Old Market House Arts Centre, as this artist has overcome a disability and learned to paint with the gifts she has and those gifts shine out in the autumnal gloom. If I hadn’t read the blurb I wouldn’t have known about her disability and her landscape/seascapes are beguiling. Especially, THE STRAND AT BUNMAHON and TOWARDS THE CUILIN.
But three large pieces, on a facing wall, capture the exciting vibrant evocation of this artists journey into achievement and beneath the surface of images. There is so much going on in the work WILD BLUE has a dark tone of flora on water; DARK LILIES has deeper bluer tones and LILLIES IN SUMMER surprises with a touch of light and white in a pool of blue. Beautiful.
Donna McNamara
Sharing the downstairs space is work by artist and printmaker, Donna McNamara and painting and monoprint methods are used in this exhibition, Unveiled. You get the solid blocks of colour sharing a space with cloudy opaque veiled tracery, like ink dropped into liquid. Sometimes it’s hard to match the titles to the images and the many smaller pieces have an understated calm and beauty.
I loved the RED PRAYER BOOK with its selection of small images and a pale blue ribbon.
Mermaids
Upstairs in Seomra De paor there is the amazing yellow surprise of Lucia Cullinane Garcia’s MERMAIDS. I enjoyed the floral detail of Helene Bruncardi and a new artist John Tubbritt with two excellent studies – MAHON FALLS and DUNGARVAN QUAY.
Dungarvan was beautiful in a kind of cloudy brightness and very busy as owners were taking their boats out of the sea for the winter. The damp end of a wet wet summer. Once again the food at Merry’s beside the Arts Centre was impressive and part of a fine experience.
