Seeking Calm on St Patrick’s Day

PAINTINGS by Dara Ennis will go on display of the County Museum on St Patrick’s Day and the exhibition will continue until April 10.
This is the artist’s second solo exhibition, showcasing paintings of vistas by the sea. The paintings included are large in scale and are based on the theme of Seeking Calm. The work is monochromatic, giving a sense of space within the frame, which blends naturally with the contrast of light and dark tones in the paintings.
Dara has had group exhibitions in Galway and Dun Laoghaire in 2000 and 2001. She is a graduate of GMIT college of Art, IADT in Dun Laoghaire and the Crawford College of Art and Design in Cork.
She gained a scholarship in 1999 from Paderborn University in Germany. Her work has been purchased by the National Council for Education Awards (NCEA) and displayed in the Millennium Art Exhibition at Merrion Square.
She says art is a hugely important part of her life. “I paint because I cannot paint. It is like asking a composer not to link words, themes and emotions and translate it into a lyric, dance or poem. One can try and hold it back, or even not find a muse but it eventually bursts out. It has to.
“What is art? At my stage in life, I can truthfully answer that question for myself. It is a world in itself. I would not understand, tolerate this real world without it. I never knew the steps to how to be a professional artist. I only ever knew the need for the path I walk. Now, I fill this path with many children, the students I teach and when art is not there, the art I teach is.”
On the creative process, she says, “When I paint, the concept is its entirety, I do not paint to see the colours, textures, light and pattern, but I use these elements to understand why I paint the subject matter. Usually when I am through a painting, I see why I have studied it. It has been translated in the rendering; it is surely an amazing experience. Something akin to spending hours and lots of money on an expensive but excellent psychologist. The view, the seeing, is in the rendering. I always have an idea to start with but it culminates with other offshoots from my intellect and becomes whole. One may see in my work a change of subject matter, but it tends to hold onto an atmospheric quality.”