Exhibition: Still Lifes? Catherine Hammond Gallery, Glengarriff, Co. Cork

 - August 2012. Upon arrival at the gallery, straightaway I honed in on several mixed media works by Regine Bartsch. It did help that one or two were displayed along a wall facing out to the street through a large plate glass window, about 15 feet inside. It was of particular interest to me at the time because shortly before that I’d been experimenting with paint and pastels in combination during the first project of part 1.
What's also pretty evident are the striking colours used. Apart from their immediate attraction at a distance, viewing them close up was also fascinating because of the variation in texture resulting from the range of finishes from the smooth paint to the grainy matt finish of the pastel. I could also detect traces of graphite pencil. There are passages of both transparent and opaque paint here and taking a guess at the possible media used, I would say watercolour or ink, acrylic in an opaque and possibly transparent way, which I think was applied under the dry media: possibly chalk, oil pastel or similar.  These paintings combine both organic and geometric forms and there is a lot of foreshortening caused by the high viewpoint, giving them an added dimension, along with the intentional distortions and exaggerations of forms.

Click on this link to view more images in the exhibition:

http://hammondgallery.com/wordpress/still-lifes
On researching the artist a little more I found a couple of paintings of interiors in acrylic. These weren't in this exhibition but I decided to give them a mention here as they are quite unlike the still life paintings in that the colours used are mostly muted and the whole composition appears smooth and flowing with an underlying mistiness which gives a look of depth, as well as the use of linear perspective and ,as far as I can tell, an absence of atmospheric perspective.

They’re mostly devoid of organic forms, rather geometric forms seem to dominate – as would usually be the case in the interior of a building. They have a semi-abstract, even abstract appearance.

For a bigger selection of the artist's work visit:
http://bartsch.ie/regine/artist.php

Suzy O’Mullane’s oil paintings appear simplified and even childlike. The way that the perspective is distorted seems to give the compositions a flat appearance but I do like the bold use of paint and colour.

Just as this exhibition contains mixed media, I also have mixed feelings about some of the artwork on display. There was a time when my view of this kind of style  would have been to dismiss it as having little merit, but now I realize just how elusive a skill it is, as an adult to be able to approach a subject almost from  a child’s point of view  to depict something in this way successfully. To have the confidence and conviction to push ahead with it is a real accomplishment. At the same time I think it is probably the case that an artist needs to already be established in order to pull it off…that might sound like I’m contradicting what I've just written - enough said for now.

http://www.katherineboucherbeug.com/biog.html

http://www.hamiltongallery.ie/artist/Jane+O'Malley