"Adare and Beyond"

Vault Gallery

Village Hall

Adare

Co. Limerick

22nd November  at 7.30pm

The opening speaker will be Countess Dunraven.

Runs until 6th December 2008

Having been derailed in earlier years by the mundane pressures of life, I now find myself with the luxury of being able to revisit my past.  With the exploration of my past, comes a recognition of the muses that have inspired my work.

Returning to Adare and West Limerick, I realise how this village, and its surrounding landscape, call to mind evocative and beautiful memories from my past.  Among those memories are grazing cattle, the heavy rich soil and the distant haze of the Golden Vale.  The distinctive architecture of Adare village instils a sense of appreciation for a time when life was of a much slower pace.  These memories of the past bring with them a sense of the tangible nature of place, and particularly the tactile relationship connecting the environment with its inhabitants.  Through my work, I endeavour to capture the essence of what that past calls to mind, so that the viewer may experience something  of that special place and time.

In attempting this endeavour, the focus of my work is on cameo images of the unique buildings of Adare and its environs in the Golden Vale.  These are portrayals of the area, as seen through its characteristic colours, together with the moods created by the interplay of light and shadow.

While painting I enter into a mode of recording positive and negative colour shapes, layering the nuances to build up texture and colour.  The experience is one of moving around the painting in a magical flow.  Each brushstroke is an emotional expression of my personal connection with the subject. The secret is to walk away from the painting at the right moment.

As expressed by Antoine de Sainte-Expury:

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

Comments

[Stephen Power]

Very best of luck for the exhibition, Geraldine. From what I saw of your excellent work, at a preview, it will be a run away success. Your work is so "hot" you'll need RED ADARE to put the flames out! (For those born after 1980, he was an American oil rig fire fighter).