Mark Ewart finds that the weight of art history and the lineage of landscape painting is never far away in Bridget Flannery’s work
Bridget Flannery has always shown great acuity and connection with her immediate surroundings. In these times however, her recent paintings are an imaginary expression of the beautiful places she has visited and those she yearns for. Whether she is painting Ardmore, Co Waterford, where she lived and worked for years, or Carlow, where she is now based, her eye and her memory are drawn to ‘texture, tone, shape and history’. Flannery’s current paintings in acrylic, often using collage on birch panels, are bolder, more intense and more pared back than previous works. ‘Maybe it is because of lockdowns,’ she suggests, that ‘the paintings have become spaces or places in themselves that spark me on to new work.’
