Since 2017, Limerick Museum has showcased the works of a number of artists from Limerick and further afield, in the gallery space of the Franciscan Church on Henry Street. On this page, you will find the biographies and links for the artists who have featured in our gallery.
Limerick Museum's Artist Showcase
Maurice Quillinan
Maurice initially studied sculpture and printmaking at Limerick School of Art. Maurice did mostly stone carving and some bronze maquettes for the larger stone pieces. The bronze work was done at CAST in Dublin, giving him an early introduction to the professional world of art. Maurice has always drawn incessantly anything that might yield an idea for a new piece; this is a process Maurice has never stopped After graduating Maurice spent a year working as a technician in the sculpture department. This proved to be another invaluable learning experience, not to mention the multitude of canvas stretchers made for the staff. After this year Maurice studied at the Royal College of Art in London. Maurice was awarded the Henry Moore Foundation scholarship. After graduating Maurice was offered a full time job at Henry Moore’s studio, but Maurice wanted to continue in his own direction, so he went on to Paris where Maurice enrolled as an Auditere Libre, a free student) in the sculpture school He worked part time for the French sculptor, Maxim Adam Tessier. Maurice stayed at the Irish College. He was awarded a visiting lecturer at Macmaster in Toronto. Maurice eventually returned to Limerick, where he studied History of Art and Architecture at UL and taught part time.
Artist’s statement (June 2020) (art displayed in the slideshow below)
My work has always been about trying to develop a visual analytical language that describes my perception of the physical and emotional world we temporarily inhabit. It is a searching for the DNA coding of distilled fragmented experiences, which when collated, forms an explanation as to what makes us all individual entities of a whole. This when added with ones history of experiences forms a reality which with time will become a remembered reality.
For instance a painting, drawing or photograph of a person or landscape, will never be a landscape or person: it will always be a collection of coloured marks on a support which approximates to our learned understanding of the subject, ( a person who has never seen a tree before would consider a realistic painting of a tree as an abstraction) so I am endeavouring to form what is the essence of an experience using similar coloured short hand descriptive marks and reconfigure them to describe my experience of a given subject……
Maurice Quillinan
https://www.mauricequillinan.net/
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Samuel Walsh
Samuel Paul Walsh was born in Wimbledon, London, England to Irish parents, his mother from Limerick and his father from Ennis. He was educated in London and also in Limerick at Villiers Secondary School. He lived in Limerick from 1968 to 1990 and he now lives and works in Co. Clare. He studied art at the Limerick School of Art and philosophy at Mary Immaculate College of Education, Limerick. He took his MFA. at the National College of Art & Design, Dublin. He is closely associated with the beginnings of the Limerick Exhibition of Visual Art (EV+A/eva international) and was the founder of Quadrant, an annual exhibition for young artists held in the Belltable Arts Centre, Limerick which ran from 1993 until 2007. He is an ardent promoter of contemporary drawing and to this end he founded in 1987 with support from friends, the National Collection of Contemporary Drawing that was gifted by him to the Limerick City Gallery of Art in 1991. The collection has continued to grow as new works are added to it on a regular basis and also contains drawings on permanent loan from the Arts Council of Ireland's Drawing Collection.
In 1997 he was elected a member of Aosdána, a self-governing body set up by the Irish Government with advice from the poet and writer Anthony Cronin to recognise outstanding contributions by individuals to the creative arts in Ireland. He served as a member of Aosdána's Toscaireacht from 2007-2009, 2015-2016 & 2018-2020. He taught Life Drawing at the Limerick School of Art & Design from 1987 to 1997. In 2005 he was the Professor of Drawing for the Autumn semester at the Pont-Aven School of Contemporary Art, Brittany, France. He has also been a visiting lecturer at this college and to the National College of Art & Design, Dublin and the Burren College of Art, Co. Clare. He taught on the Drawing Studies Course at the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, annually between 2008-2010.
Artist's Statement (June 2020) (art displayed in the slideshow below)
The subtitle of this painting (displayed in the slideshow below) refers to a famous classical artist although it might be argued for once, not as famous as his daughter who was also an artist. In my art I strive for the essence of whatever might become the subject matter - object matter - of the painting. It is hit and miss at the best of times so the final work has to be able to stand on its own without reference to its origins.
Orazio Gentileschi was an Italian 16/17th century artist. He had a famous artist daughter called Artemisia.
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Cindy Fogarty
Cindy Fogarty is a BA Honours Fine Art Painting graduate of Limerick School of Art and Design who currently lives and works in her native Limerick city. Working predominately through the medium of paint, her practice examines our neurological digestion of information in our quickly evolving society, how we respond to it, and how it can mould our ways of thinking.
Artist's Statement (June 2020) (art displayed in the slideshow below)
This work was informed by research into neuroscientific studies being conducted around visual perception and cognition. Abstract architecture is present in the work, and where possible the work adopts the architecture it inhabits by way of large painting installations, transforming the space into an immersive experience. Illusion, as a metaphor for consciousness is used to explore the infinite perspectives we experience throughout our existence. Our brains function as a great interpreter of incoming information, generating our individual personal belief of reality. The concept of truth has become debatable and interpretations malleable. The body of work presented in ‘Dimensions’ is an overarching depiction of our post-modern experience, which crosses the boundaries of age, education, race, creed, culture and language by generating the same disorientating physiological sensation in each viewer, illuminating our commonalities as opposed to our differences. In this way, the work has Utopian intentions.
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Bernadette Doolan
Award winning Irish artist Bernadette Doolan, living in Wexford, is winner of the best overall work by a non-Academician, and winner of the Irish News award for depicting Ireland today, in The Royal Ulster Academy annual exhibition. Bernadette was selected for The Ruth Borchard self-portrait Exhibition, the UK’s only public collection of self-portraits by British and Irish artists. The Ruth Borchard Collection represents the very best of twentieth-century and contemporary self-portraiture. Bernadette explores the fragility of identity in the context of childhood through much of her recent work. Her figurative work is the depiction of the human self through exploration of strength and vulnerabilities. Her work has been described as having an ‘emotional weight with psychological intensity that is not necessarily representing the physical, but one’s internal voice.
Artist's Statement (July 2020) (art displayed in the slideshow below)
I am not worthy.
A collection of paintings depicting aspects of childhood viewed through an adult’s reflection. Through the process of reflection, I became aware of the power of words and suggestions when I was a child. It is said that children are like sponges, they absorb their environment and those in it. The child always listening, captivated by every word, influenced by the power of suggestion.” I am not worthy” struck a particular chord with me, when I heard the mantra coming from my lips, after years of repetition. But one day I really heard the words that I had repeated without question. They never really felt comfortable. I used to mumble that part of the prayer in mass. This body of work is not about questioning anyone religion or beliefs, but more to do with how powerful words can be. I did not like to be told I was not worthy, what if as children we are empowered by words that prompt us to love ourselves, believe in ourselves, be kind to ourselves.
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Niamh Cunningham
Niamh Cunningham is an artist living and working in Beijing for over ten years. Her work is focused on ecological insights and linked to themes of personal and collective transformation. She works mostly with paints and employs mixed media and photographic processes in her creative-led eco-social art practices. She writes about her group projects and exhibitions around across China on her website. She has also curated a number of exhibitions: local curator for Intimate Transgressions at Inter Gallery 798 October 2016, co-curated the IRISH WAVE exhibitions for the Irish festivals in Beijing and Shanghai every March from 2012 to 2016. Some of her articles have been published in the China Daily and other publications.
In 2020 she began collecting interviews and written submissions on her blog on ‘The Memory Palace of Trees’ for her weekly blog gathering stories from poets, children’s writers, foresters, artists, dendrologists and other people across China, America and Europe. The gathering of people’s engagement with trees highlights the often taken-for-granted subject of relationality, the mutual interdependence between trees and people. The tree stories are posted monthly with the intention of continuing into 2021.
In another related area, Niamh’s ‘Sucrose Series’ (begun in 2015) is a novel visual exploration in mixed media. The work focusses on visualising the transformations that occur during crystalisation as a metaphor of ever present ecological metamorphosis. Reflecting in the documentary film An Ecology of Mind (Norah Bateson 2010), on the work of her father, the ecological systems philosopher and polymath, Gregory Bateson, Catherine Bateson echoes her father’s concerns “What is it that makes us not see the delicate tendancies in an ecosystem that gives it its integrity. We don’t see them therefore we break them.”
Memory Palace of Trees - A collection of stories
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Julie Brazil
Julie Brazil is an artist from New Ross, County Wexford who is currently based in Limerick city. She graduated from Crawford College of Art and Design with a BA in Fine Art Painting, and continued her academic studies in the University of Limerick, receiving her Doctorate in 2012. Brazil was a member of Contact Studios for over ten years and is now part of James Street Artists’ Studios. Her work has been exhibited in group shows nationally.
Exhibitions include Fragments (2019), Matisse’s Garden (2017), Small Artworks II (2016), Make (2015), Hive Emerging (2015) in Waterford and a solo show Landslide (2015) in Leixlip Library, Kildare. Brazil lectures in art education at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick. She conducted Art Educator in Residence Courses in the National Gallery of Ireland in 2015 and 2018.
Artist's Statement (October 2020) (art displayed in the slideshow below)
Elsewhere
This exhibition is a continuation of a series based on my past experiences of landscape. There is reference to landscape but it is the emotional connection to landscape that is the point of inquiry. These paintings are imagined spaces based on memory. They are an intuitive response, giving an arena to explore and experiment. I work by building up delicate layers, using different techniques and weights of brushstroke, meeting with the painting as it changes. Landscapes become receptacles of us, they allow us the freedom to build our own internal landscape. An architectural response is beginning to emerge in some of the works; the spaces become rooms with discreet vistas emerging, solid spaces within the four lines of a rectangle.
