Artist Details

Cormac O'Leary

Portfolio

Path to the Well

 

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Cormac O’Leary studied Fine Art at Sligo RTC and held his first solo show at Sligo Art Gallery in 1999. He has exhibited his work widely in Ireland, the UK and America, winning numerous awards. He is represented in many private and public collections.

“Paintings evolve over years of gathered images, motifs emerging
and receding, stories being retold and reimagined. The Friday still-life was
painted in the hub of a wintry city, ghostly creaking on the studio floorboards,
a street din of traffic and voices outside. More recent work was accompanied
by birdsong and leaves rustling in the breeze. Visitants wandered onto one canvas, from a dusky wood. They lingered in the memory like shades.
As an artist I return to places over time, picking up the threads of a visual story. Scenes change but are also restored, reafirmed. Places are always renewing themselves- a shelf of rock by a thundering sea, beaches in a winter light, fields overshadowed by mountains, forests in seasonal flux. I draw the image out, build it up in waves of colour, try to strike the right note; the afterglow of memory.”