Paula Kearney | After the Rain
Monday 24th June to Sunday 7th July 2024
Exhibition Opening: Friday 28th June, 7pm to 9pm
Paula Kearney brings a new series of work to the Signal in Bray ( 24th June to 7th July). This collection of paintings explore the heavy calm felt after rain has dispersed.
A sense of quiet prevails throughout the pieces as life unfolds after unadulterated rain has soaked the landscape. The plants awaken, the birds arise slowly and hover over the land, while the heavy clouds linger before departing. Shadows move across the landscape while a little light is allowed to break through.
Paula’s paintings wish to capture the weight of the heavy skies upon the forever-soaked landscapes.
In her last solo show in Signal Arts Centre she presented the landscape as an abstract moody back drop while her high sweeping grasses dominated the forefront of the paintings. This time the paintings imply that the landscape and the sky are two dominant partners. The lands here are painted abstractly with a palette knife making marks, while for the heavy skies she uses a brush in order to be more constructive and real. This allowed Paula the freedom to play with the paint and create a vast view.
These paintings hope to invite the viewer in, for them to connect with a location, imagined or real. But ultimately the paintings wish to share with the viewer the feelings of a place, the silent wind, the cold, the heavy skies, the soggy ground and the peace felt while standing alone in the view.
The paintings themselves marry the two mediums of oil paint and graphite. The brush creates lush dark and broody scenes while the graphite in some of the forefronts allows her to make sharp bold complex lines of the lifting uncurling foliage.
Mood and memory and silence are central to her overall composition.
These images don’t have to be real like a photograph is of a place but they are about the feelings you have when standing there in peaceful isolation.
The paintings allow the viewer to decide what they see and feel.
Paula is based in Co. Wicklow, her career as a painter has spanned over 30 years. Her painting practice has consistently evolved, from painting Figurative images to exploring the landscape which now surrounds her.
She has exhibited her work extensively aboard and in Ireland.