New paintings and drawings by
Catriona O'Connor at the Tipperary Institute
The Kerry-born painter presents an exhibition of new work at the Tipperary Institute in Thurles from May 6-26.
Drawing has always been ingrained in O'Connor's work with the added printmaker's discipline working with Prof. Renato Bruscaglia in Urbino. Using charcoal, graphite and translucent watered-colour on heavily textured handmade paper she revisits the lakes of her childhood. The weight of water and floating in subliminal depths is a recurring theme in Catriona O'Connor's work.
Statements
“The connection between the body and the earth seems to speak out from
these paintings. There is a cross current of stress, not in the negative
sense of overwrought, but in the positive sense of a force through which
transformation can occur. The kind of stress which holds you up and allows
you to grow.”
Professor Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin, Director, Irish
World Music Centre, and Chairman of Culture Ireland
“Catriona O'Connor's paintings enabled me to see stone, in landscape
or as sculpture or monument, in an entirely new way. Her exploration
of the colours and tones inherent in stone was a revelation to me, as
I had thought of stone as basically monochrome. Catriona's paintings
realise how stone is part of a whole landscape of vibrant colour. Its
colour and form in her work are an echo of that landscape, and a celebration
of its richness, that truly makes the stone sing.”
Paddy Bushe, poet
“Catriona O'Connor's paintings of the west coast of Ireland are cold
to the bone and are correctly Atlantean in feeling. The greys, browns
and blues of her watered-colours evoke an atmosphere only present in
Ireland; the meeting of northern and southern worlds through the European
Irish eye. This is the world of the primitive, of ancient conquest and
discovery and of the true nature of the Irish who have been through history
holistic, refusing to reduce experience into separate parts.”