Recollective Spaces – Maeve McCarthy

The Molesworth Gallery is delighted to present an exhibition of new paintings by Maeve McCarthy.

Elegiac and meditative, McCarthy’s work reflects on the relationship between place, memory, identity and what it means to call somewhere home. The work has a deeply-rooted existential quality, a profound connection with the surroundings in which it is made. Writing in the autumn 2020 issue of The Irish Arts Review, Cristín Leach said of McCarthy's work that it is about ‘a deep sense of place, memory as a generational bequest, the liminal gap between memory and presence, and the dance between belonging and feeling alone'. In communicating this connection with a very particular place, and the sense of a human presence just beyond the edge of the canvas, she gives the work its universal quality.

On a formal level, McCarthy continues her exploration of the modulations of light and dark on the painted surface, mostly at nighttime or twilight. The nocturnes conjure a fine balance between realism and abstraction, as extraneous detail is cut and our mind’s eye is coaxed into completing the image. As in the past, the works are remarkable for the subtlety of the artists’s palette and her deft handling of light

Born in 1964, Maeve McCarthy spent several years in the USA upon graduating from NCAD and has also worked in film animation in Ireland and Germany. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, including the BP Portrait Awards at the National Portrait Gallery, London. McCarthy has won several awards, mainly for portraiture. Her portrait of Maeve Binchy is in the collection of the National Gallery of Ireland. Her work is also held by the National Museum, the Haverty Trust, the National Self-Portrait Collection, the OPW, Fingal County Council and the Royal Dublin Society. She has been a full member of the RHA since 2007.