Barbara Warren’s work, rather than startling or imposing on the eye, invites the spectator to come in, writes Hilary Pyle
Half way through her career, Barbara Warren (1925-2017) was invited to contribute a self-portrait to the National Self Portrait Collection in Limerick, which she took on as a personal challenge. She regarded herself as a landscape artist, used to standing back from her subject matter, but later she wrote: ‘In making this self-portrait, I was unable to control the level of my involvement as much as I would have liked.‚’ She added, with the wry humour that haunts her painting, ‘If I had not regarded it as a challenge, the picture would probably not have been finished.‚’
The legacy of stained-glass artist Helen Moloney is in the vibrancy of her colours and her use of coloured glass and lead lines in an abstract manner, writes Bart Felle
Tom Climent’s recent paintings appear to edge more and more away from pure abstraction, writes Mark Ewart
Margo Banks is so instinctively attuned to her subject that her energetic approach and her subject matter are inseparable, writes Isabella Evangelisti