Mary Donnelly throws some light on summer at New Quay

LIGHTNESS of Summer: new paintings by Mary Donnelly is the new exhibition opening at the Russell Gallery in New Quay on Saturday.

The exhibition showcasing work by the Connemara artist will be opened by Galway City arts officer James Harrold at 6pm and will run until September 30.
Mary lives in the Renvyle peninsula in north-west Connemara and is a landscape painter. Of the work being featured in the exhibition, she says, “There are some [landscapes] from here and some of the Burren as well. My work is quite suggestive and it may take people a while to kind of engage with the painting but once they see something in it, the painting will open up to them.”
A native of Dundalk, she says she has been heavily influenced by one of Ireland’s great poets. “An early influence for me in my work would be the poet Patrick Kavanagh. Through his poetry, I began to see the landscape in a certain way. He would have seen the divine in the landscape if he was looking at a hill. If he saw a tree or a bush, it wasn’t merely a tree or a bush, it was a gateway to the divine.”
The lifestyle and landscape of the West of Ireland led to her relocation to Connemara in the early ’90s. “I was living in Dublin at the time, I had a studio at the Temple Bar Gallery Studios back in ’91 and I decided to come here for three months. I sublet my studio and where I was living and I didn’t go back, I’m still here. I came for the landscape and I was looking for a part of Ireland that I felt had disappeared from the east coast, where I grew up. Culturally, there was still a connection to the land, our culture was here and the language.”
Mary studied fine art at DIT Dublin from 1982 to ’86. From 1986 to 1991, she was a member of Templebar Gallery and Studios, Dublin before moving to her home in Connemara. Around 20 of her pictures will be included in the exhibition.
For more information about the exhibition or to find out about opening hours, contact the Russell Gallery on 065 7078185, email info@russellgallery.net or visit the website, www.russellgallery.net.