Michael Farrell Retrospective @ Bodega
Jonathan Knuttel @ RUBY Lounge
The “ Yellow Man “ Collection By Pauline Bewick @ Greyfriars
Declan O’Connor @ Solo Arte, Coolgower, Tramore Road
"Terry the Weaver" @ The Ardmore Room, Tower Hotel
Jean Conroy-"Things I Have To Tell You"@ Garter Lane
AIB Corporate Collection @ The Granary
Bridget Flannery and Bob Fraiser @ Dyehouse Gallery
Bang @ The Salvage Shop. Shaws Window & Airport Road, Waterford
Miranda Cleary @ Bausch & Lomb
Michael
Farrell Retrospective
Bodega – John St
Waterford
official opening by Robert Ballagh on Monday 20th Sept
Michael Farrell was one of the best-known artists of
his generation. A spirited and influential presence on the art scene since the
mid 1960’s, his work, while remaining his personal stamp, went through
several fundamental changes of style and content, from hard edged Celtic abstraction
via semi abstract political allegory to passionately engaged representation.
In the late 60’s, after a teaching for a while in the Pratt Institute
in New York, he came back to Ireland and enlisted Robert Ballagh, who became
a close friend.
He produced sympathetic portrayals of the village and landscape around his home
in Cardnet, France. His appetite for controversy was stimulated by the clerical
scandals of the 1990’s and he hit the headlines in 1994 when a group of
his works entitles “The Bishop’s Honeymoon”, depicting an
explicit sexual encounter between a mitred Bishop and a nude woman, were withdrawn
from Exhibition in Dublin.
A regular exhibitor with The Taylor Gallery in Dublin, he is represented in
numerous private and public collections, including the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery,
The Irish Museum of Modern Art, The Ulster Museum, the Bibliotheque National,
the Centre George Pompidou and the National University of Australia.
Michael died of cancer in June 2000, after a long battle with the disease endured
an intermittent series of Gruelling treatments with remarkable fortitude and
good grace.
This exhibition will be opened by Robert Ballagh – his best friend – on Monday 20th September 2004 – with proceed of the night going to the cancer association.
A Unique Artist from The Czech Republic
Chez K's - Wiliam St, Waterford
Was born and studied in Ukraine. She has been living and working
in the Czech Republic since 1993, and exhibits her work at several galleries.
She applies various techniques: oil, acrylic, tempera, and aquarelle. She created
a whole series of paintings within the sequence titled
“Prague’s Secret Places.”
Her paintings are to be found in private collections around the world. At present,
her paintings have gained a more abstract form. You may judge for yourselves
by viewing this online GALLERY.
Author’s statement: The style of my painting changes continuously. I may
say that I’m still searching for myself. One transforms endlessly throughout
life. As our faces and bodies change, so does our perception. This depends both
on our internal balance and on our surroundings. A transforming style means
that the artist is most likely still scrutinizing, searching, studying; he is
faced with a goal and heads towards it. This is aided by his surroundings, the
people around him, his family, life stories and experiences. Due to an accelerated
lifestyle, I try to abandon the local environment and create a different one,
where I can be entirely alone and which belongs solely to me. And I can do this
only through painting. I don’t really want to maintain one style. Diversity
is history, and in my case, it is my history. I express emotions using ordinary
and sometimes extraordinary things. In my painting,
I try to express optimistic feelings in life in an abstract form. In this case,
the viewer has the opportunity to create a common philosophy with the painter.
Anybody can create a realistic picture, and that’s why my pictures have
an abstract character. Everybody should have room for imagination.
The choice of colours reflects either a positive or a negative
attitude towards life. The light and shadow in my paintings expresses the energy,
which forms objects. For me, painting is a natural part of life, a means of
expressing my thoughts, feelings, spiritual peace, balance, positive energy
and its various forms and transformations. I have to grow, and my work will
mature. I keep telling myself that I’m still at the beginning; this is
only a part, not the whole.
@ RUBY Lounge
come and see our Knuttel Exhibition
at RUBY Lounge
home of the Waterford Fringe "Festival Club".
Jonathan Knuttel was born in Dublin in 1972. Although never engaged in any manner of formal artistic training, Jonathan's desire to paint and to study the history of art was evident from a very early age. He spent his most informative years in the company of his father, Peter and uncle, Graham Knuttel who were both heavily involved with the Lambert Puppet Theatre as well maintaining successful careers in printmaking, sculpture and painting. Encouragement from his early mentors and, in later years, familiarity with the work of German Expressionist painters such as Otto Mueller, Franz Marc and Beckmann inspired him to focus on pure line, form and, most importantly, colour. His choice of subject matter emerged from his fascination with humanity - social interactions, the differences between the sexes and the humour found in so many daily situations. Latterly, Jonathan's figurative oil paintings present a startling and somewhat garish prospect of today's hedonistic Ireland. Whether he is depicting gamblers at play, entertainers & performers, women adorning the arms of visibly affluent men, or sets of couples competing against one another, Jonathan manages to capture the human form at its most sentient during the most vulnerable moments of pleasure, contemplation, unease and determination.
The
“ Yellow Man “ Collection
By
Pauline Bewick
Presented by SOLO ARTE
At the
Municipl Gallery, Greyfriars, Waterford
Thursday 16th September - Friday 15th October
SOLO ARTE is grateful to have been afforded the opportunity to exhibit the “Yellow Man” collection by Pauline Bewick to coincide with the Waterford Festival of Light Opera 2004.
The collection consists of approximately one hundred and fifty items which include tapestries, ceramics, watercolours, stained glass and sketches.
The opening of the exhibition will feature a short ballet of the Yellow Man performed by young talented local artists.
Pauline Bewick enjoys international acclaim for her unique style and vibrant work and has been one of the leading contemporary artists in Ireland for several decades.
She was brought up on a small farm in Kerry after her mother, Harry Bewick moved there from Northumberland in England with her 2 daughters. After leaving Ireland they went to Wales and England and travelled from progressive school to progressive school, living in a caravan, a houseboat, a railway carriage, a workman’s hut, a gate lodge and later in a Dublin city house, Pauline eventually returned to Kerry, where she has lived for almost 30 years with her husband. Her daughters Poppy and Holly are also artists and produce magnificent work in their own right.
Pauline started to paint at the age of two, and has continued throughout her life, Her retrospective exhibition “ Two to Fifty” at the Guinness Hop Store in 1985 attracted record audiences. Her “Yellow Man” , “Bewick’s Ideal Being “, exhibition in 1996 at the Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin also drew huge numbers of all ages. A documentary on Bewick, “A Painted Life”, filmed and directed by David Shaw-Smith has been shown on RTE and Channel 4, at the Pompidou Centre in Paris and at the Los Angeles and Chicago film festivals.
“The Yellow Man”
“I am yellow but a mouse sees me as grey”
A child. Man. Everyone. The Yellow Man is an innocent
abroad - provocative, naïve, knowing. In the vineyard, town, day or night
- he is a lover of living, of dancing, of wine, people, babies, butterflies
and trees.
…he doesn’t make judgements, is not grasping. Like nature he is
just there, simply there. He has no history. His vision is unattached to the
past. He looks at an object without knowledge of it. His questions don’t
demand an answer. He is complete, yet open for more. His changing body doesn’t
surprise him. He’s young, old, blushing, excited; his antennae flush,
shrink and grow. He lives his silent life observing, alert, empty, without guilt,
unconditioned - yet in tune, alone.
“ He was a doodle. I was sitting in the sun on
our balcony in Tuscany wondering what my next inspiration would be. I had been
painting and writing “Ireland, An Artist’s Year” but now having
come to Italy on holiday, I had to leave the subject of Ireland behind. I was
stuck, no ideas, artists block. My pen doodled with no mind behind it. Out came
a figure of a Yellow Man standing on his hands naked amongst the rows of vines.
Two little boys from next door ran up the steps. “What are you doing?”
“A Yellow Man” I answered. They ran away laughing. I suppose he
was inspired by a small strong farmer who was always alone. Always smiling he
appeared content in his solitude. Day in day out he worked in the rows of vines
and trimmed the tendrils. He climbed the cherry trees and olive trees for their
fruits bringing them home to his brother’s family. But even amongst his
family he seemed alone.”
Pauline Bewick
The Yellow Man became many multi-media: Sketches, watercolours, oil paintings, tapestry, stained glass, tango music, dance and theatre, a street figure and a book.
Declan
O’Connor
Exhibiting at
SOLO ARTE, Coolgower, Tramore Road, Waterford
Friday 17th September - Friday 15th October
Declan O’Connor from Co. Tipperary was
born in 1957. He has enjoyed considerable success after beginning to paint relatively
late in life (1990).
Beginning, first of all, with portraiture depicting the Irish Writers, Yeats, Joyce, Beckett and Shaw and then turning his attention to the 1916 signatories in 1992, which were subsequently purchased personally by Michael Smurfit.
>From then he has turned to landscapes and horses (especially horse fairs), his style becoming more fluid and Jack B. Yeats like ! He has returned to portraiture occasionally, most notably a C.J. Haughey portrait which was publicly auctioned. He painted under the pseudonam of Roderic O’Connor during this period.
Exhibitions:
Front Room Gallery, Arbutus Lodge Hotel 1992
and 1995
Saudi Arabia 1995/96
The Private Collector Gallery, Innishannon 1999 - present
Fuller Building East 57th and 5 th Ave NYC
10 day exhibition October 2002
People’s Gallery Fenn’s Quay Cork,2000 - 2003
Vienna Woods Hotel, Cork, April 2004
Patrons
Dr. M. Smurfit
Mr. Charles J. Haughey
Mr. Liam Cronin
Mrs Jean Kennedy Smith
Mr. Cantillon (Solicitor)
Mr. John Mulhern
"Terry the Weaver"
The Ardmore Room, Tower Hotel
The Mall Waterford
Over many years I have exhibited my work extensively throughout
Ireland and abroad. I have had many commissions for my work from both the corporate
and private sectors, which predominantly have been for traditional flat woven
tapestry. These exhibitions and commissions are listed separately
"Things I Have To Tell You"
@ Garter Lane
Jean Conroy is a graduate from WIT and Limerick School of Art and Design with a BA in fine art sculpture. Her work is a combination of sculpture, drawing and mixed media assemblage. She uses found objects from the natural world incorporating them with drawing and hand-sewn pieces. Her work deals with issues of human emotion mostly to do with being a woman in society and the history of women in society.
"Imagine Ireland"
Waterford Treasures @ The Granary
This exhibition evolved from the idea of images and themes that are connected with Ireland, and it looked at the AIB Art Collection for works that, in various ways, expressed the idea of national identity.
Harry Clarke, in Lady Hibernia, personified Ireland as a beautiful but rather sad looking woman, complete with harp and an assortment of Celtic motifs. With most artists, however, the references to Ireland are far less specific, but no less powerful. Sean Keating’s paintings like West of Ireland Quayside have become archetypal images connected with national identity. Artists in the first half of the century often looked to the West and to rural life for indigenous subjects, and so we find Grace Henry’s noisy Claddagh Market of 1916 and Elizabeth Rivers’ atmospheric céilí, with men and women stationed at opposite corners.
The writer and art critic Brian O’Doherty once perceptively wrote that in Ireland, “the past always had a big future” and so it’s not surprising to find artists drawing on their personal or collective past for indigenous subject matter. The theme of personal history is not a new one—Jack B.Yeats often delved into his childhood memories for his subject matter. Rita Duffy does it now with her iconic Geansaí, using the image of her childhood sweater to celebrate a mother’s unsung handiwork and, ultimately, motherly love. That this kind of sweater is particularly associated with Ireland of the past gives this work added resonance, in the same way that Marie Foley’s Ancient Hurley is a romantic image that is tied to national identity. Her oversized hurley is meant for a heroic game played by giants, perhaps as seen through the eyes of a child. Chris Neuman also focuses on hurling, his piece a contemporary tribute to the legendary Christy Ring. John Vallelly’s Bullet Thrower has some of the same heroic quality, similarly attached to a uniquely Irish sport.
Catherine Delaney re-claimed the traditional Irish fishing vessel as a ghostly skeleton in Currach. John Behan also uses a boat theme but his vessel is embedded with human skeletons, his Ghostfamine Ship an evocative reminder of a tragic aspect of Ireland’s past. Similarly, Rowan Gillespie looks back at the famine, giving history a tangible and unsettling presence.
And of course there’s the landscape, perhaps the most pervasive theme in Irish painting, and one that is closely bound up with national identity. Martin Gale’s painting has traces of human presence on the land, the familiar patchwork arrangement of fields on distant hills echoed by the pattern on the traditional woollen rug. And, as its title suggests, Tony O’Malley’s Land Dirge is an abstract hymn to the land, homage to something of mystical importance in the Irish psyche.
Dr. Frances Ruane, BA, MFA, PhD
Curator, AIB Collection,&
Lecturer,NCAD, History of Art and Design
Bridget Flannery and Bob Fraiser
at Dyehouse Gallery
from Friday 24th September
In conjunction with the Waterford Art Trail accomplished artists - sculptor Robert Frazier and painter Bridget Flannery are sharing a two-person exhibition at the Dyehouse Gallery, Dyehouse Lane ,Waterford. This is a fascinating opportunity to see how the works of a sculptor and a painter (husband and wife in private life) complement one another.
"Bridget Flannery can be described as a landscape painter, though it might be more correct to describe her as a painter of Nature in the wider sense. Her pictures obviously have an organic relation with certain specific areas and places, but she makes no attempt to reproduce the surface appearance of things or to evoke purely transient effects of wind, weather and light. . . . She "abstracts" without being an abstractionist. Her forms are often closely akin to natural forms and shapes, but while their genesis may be in the natural world, they are largely autonomous and follow an internal logic of form and colour." -- Brain Fallon Ms Flannery's paintings are done in mixed media with acrylic, on wood.
“Since modern plumbing has brought water into houses, we no longer visit wells or streams, and as a result these special places in the countryside have largely been forgotten to the detriment of our spiritual development.” - Robert Frazier Mr. Frazier is inspired by the magic of these ordinary places to create his sculptures made of limestone and cast glass.
Shaws Window & Airport Road, Waterford
John O Connell
Stopping traffic on both the Quay and the Airport Road with two huge paintings.
Venue 1: 4’ x 4’. Shaw’s window, the
Quay.
Venue 2: 7’ x 9’. Outside the Salvage Shop, Airport Road. www.mondojohn.com
(086) 8126779.
Seán Corcoran
I’m not best known as a painter, but for this year’s festival contribution I’m working on two large paintings, The Time I Nearly Drowned for the window in Shaw’s and the second, as yet untitled, painting on one of the concrete gate piers at the Salvage Shop which will be over 9 foot tall.
Venue 1: 4’ x 4’. Shaw’s window, the
Quay.
Venue 2: 7’ x 9’. Outside the Salvage Shop, Airport Road.
(051) 873260.
@ Bausch & Lomb
They’re bigger, bolder, brighter … It’s Disclosure.
My latest collection. The success of Embellishment urged me to explore my fascination with the sun, moon, stars and planets. Working with new materials and on a larger scale I am now creating simple, bold contemporary images…
Venue: Bausch and Lomb. Viewing by appointment only. Details and CD ROM available from Bang @ the Salvage Shop, Airport Road, Waterford City. (051) 873260.
Source @ Athenium House Hotel, Ferrybank, Waterford
My current work is reflective of my own personal journey or, if you will, process of personal healing and transformation – a process through which I hope others may benefit.
In the earlier stages of my artistic development, my work was focused largely on that which is termed "Realism," involving seascapes, landscape and wildlife imagery primarily. I formed a very specific plan, and most times, a detailed idea and drawing, before ever going to canvas.
Over the past several years, I have experienced many breakthroughs in my personal life on a variety of levels, spiritually, emotionally, mentally and physically. This, of course, has dramatically expanded the directions of my work. It has been quite a process and a journey, and at times almost overwhelmingly exciting. It has opened new doors and pathways of creativity of which, previously, I could only have dreamed.
This newer approach involves the unilateral connection to that which one may term the "Source." This is a place of letting go of any and all attachments to the outcome of any piece of work. I make no plan. I meditate. I let go. I then put paint to canvas and, layer by layer, images begin to appear before me. Sometimes I enhance them. Sometimes not.
This freedom of expression and exploration is bringing forth images which, I believe, possess the essential elements of healing. More, it constantly teaches me about myself and my connection to all of life. In the past, I knew that I could "paint what I see." I am now learning that it is more important to "see what I paint."
Waterford Healing Arts Trust
Waterford Regional Hospital
Dunmore Road
Waterford
Tel: 051 842664
e-mail: grehanm@sehb.ie
www.waterfordhealingarts.com
Speaker: Corina Duyn
Topic: Fit to Fly - the story of an artist's journey through M.E.
Date and time: Friday, 17th September at 1.15pm
Venue: Education centre of WRH
Speaker: Clare Lalor
Topic: An introduction to Visual Psychotherapy
Date and time: Friday, 24th September at 1.15pm
Venue: Education centre of WRH
Healing Sounds Programme
Mark Power and David Flynn perform classical show songs
Date and Time: Tuesday, 21st September, starting at 2pm
Venue: Starting in foyer of WRH and moving onto various wards
Admission is free to all of the above