Mary Donnelly - Painter - Connemara Art Link

Mary Donnelly was born in Ireland in 1964. She studied Fine Art, D.I.T, Dublin 1982-86. She was a member of Temple Bar Gallery and Studios for four years and then in 1991 moved to live in North West Connemara. She has had many Solo Exhibitions throughout her career including: (2005) Glucksman Ireland Hse, NYU, USA; (2007) Paul Kane Gallery Dublin; (2009) Norman Villa Gallery, Galway.

Among her awards are: (2004) The Oriel Gallery ‘Landscape of Distinction Award’ at the Royal Hibernian Acadamy, Dublin.
(2009) The Tyrone Guthrie - Virginia Centre for the Creative Arts Exchange Fellowship. In the same year she also received the Arts Council of Ireland Travel and Training Award. Most recently in (2010) Galway Co. Council Tyrone Guthrie Bursary. Mary has work in public and private collections including The National Self Portrait Collection and is a contributor to the Great Book of Ireland.

Mary’s landscape paintings strive to go beyond mere representation of landscape and through her unique artistic process they become acts of translation. Her works describe shape, colour and form; that which we can see in front of our eyes; This captures something deeper within, something felt, something that gets ultimately transformed. There is in the Connemara Landscape of bare rock a severity with its constant exposure to the wind and sea. It is as if in its bleak exposure to these elements it holds immortality; ancient memories invisibly trapped into non porous granite by layers of time. Here it is possible to feel powerfully close to nature, to be alone and yet not feel alone. Mary Donnelly conveys in her paintings an energy that expresses solitude, silence and longing…

The austere muted colours, the odd perspectives, the gritty textural surfaces of her canvas add spatial dimension and these combined with ground marble, copper wire and nails create an almost three dimensional map. Her work evolves slowly. She carefully builds up her structures layer by layer and then by a repeat process of cutting, sanding and the use of paint, her pieces closely imitate fragments of the earth itself. Mary Donnelly’s plan is to work against the taking of Nature, to repossess the landscape, to support a reconnection with the earth. This sincerity of idiom represents a distinct contribution to the enduring genre of Landscape Painting.