Angela Griffith previews a new suite of paintings from Geraldine O’Neill, recent winner of the lreland-U.S. Council/Irish Arts Review Portraiture Award
When asked what her ambitions are as an artist, Geraldine O’Neill responded by saying ‘to keep making paintings’. The directness and sincerity by which O’Neill communicates, as a person and as a painter, is disarming. As her profile has grown nationally in recent years, her work is immediately recognizable among Irish art audiences comprising vividly painted objects from the world around her. Painting in the traditional medium of oil on canvas or linen, her images can be described as descriptively analytic of the substances she studies. It would be wrong to simply see O’Neill’s compositions as masterful in terms of their technique or mimetic quality (though they are just that), the objects depicted are contextually complex, their beautifully wrought surfaces demands that the viewer questions and considers their place within their world.
Mark Ewart visits the studio of Allihies-based artist Rachel Parry who transforms natural matter into mesmerizing art.
Kim Haughton’s portraits, on view now at the National Museum Collins Barracks, reflect on Ireland’s multi-layered society at the end of the first century of this nation state, writes Stephanie McBride
