Pat Kenny at Doorway Gallery Opening

Opening of the Doorway Gallery, Dublin by RTE presenter Pat Kenny.



Thanks to Inky Wrists

Pat Kenny and Lucy Doyle at Doorway Gallery Dublin

Denise Donnelly, Pat kenny and Lucy Doyle

Thursday 24th March was the official launch of the Doorway Gallery on South Frederick Street as well as Padraig Mc Caul's solo show "Sentinels". The night was a great success with plenty of people in the gallery. RTE's Pat Kenny opened the gallery with an excellent and entertaining speech.

New Paintings New Gallery

Mount Usher Gardens 61x71cm oil on canvas

Denise Donnelly (formerly owner of the Bad Art Gallery, Dublin and Deirdre O'Connell (formerly owner of the Bridge Gallery, Ormond Quay ) have joined forces and set up the new Doorway Gallery in the bustling city centre of  South Frederick Street Dublin 2.  Along side a league of prestigious art galleries, The Doorway Gallery will be bringing its own unique stable of contemporary artists to this artistic quarter of Georgian Dublin see more info at their website http://www.thedoorwaygallery.com/.

You can see Lucy's new paintings at the new gallery now and on-line. 

Official opening will be on the 24th March, opening by Pat Kenny.

Tapestry Collection Now Online



Flower Arrangement
92 x 76 cm
Oil on canvas





A full set of images of the paintings making up the Tapestry collection can now be seen online. Link

New Working Theme: Tapestry

Tapestry
152 x 122 cm
Oil on canvas

The paintings I have been working on since my last solo show, Persephone in 2010, have been loosely based around the theme Tapestry.  Not that I have another solo show planned until 2012, so a theme is not particularly important to the way my work is going at the moment.  However, for a while now I have been thinking about the way a tapestry is constructed of thousands of individual woollen stitches and the similarities to the way I construct my paintings.  When a tapestry is completed its numerous raised stitches fuse together visually to become a readable picture as well as a tactile object in its own right. At any stage it is evident when looking at a tapestry of what it is composed of and that the identity of each component stitch still retains all its characteristics of wool.  In a modernist approach to painting I want to keep paint as pure to its original form as I can, so that it is evident to the viewer, that it is paint that they are looking at with all its individual properties of colour, texture and form still retained. I work with a palette knife which gives the surface of my paintings a lot of depth and texture. I like this tactile quality as it helps to maintain and establish the 2-dimensional reality of the canvas.

Lucy Painting at Culture Night Dublin 2010

Persephone Exhibition, The Bad Art Gallery, Dublin. April, 2010.



Thinking of Summer
71 x 61 cm
Oil on canvas



In this exhibition Persephone, I have found my source of inspiration from Greek mythology.  It is the story of Persephone’s abduction from her mother Demeter,  the earth goddess, by Hades, king of the underworld.  Demeter in her grief forbids the earth to produce, and in the depths of her despair causes nothing to grow.  When Demeter and her daughter are finally united, the earth flourishes with renewed vegetation and colour.  But before Persephone is released Hades tricks her into eating four pomegranate seeds, which forces her to return to the underworld as his queen for a season each year, when once again the earth becomes a barren realm. This is an origin story to explain the seasons.

Something about this ancient story intrigued and inspired me and I have interpreted it in my own way, picking out the visual and playful elements.  I have tried  to impart a seductive, wintry quality to my still lives and interiors, using warm siennas and umbers and thick white, creams and neutral layers of impasto oil paint applied with a palette knife. In some of my figurative paintings, I am trying to evoke that dilemma of being physically in one place but mentally in another. In this case, being locked in the cosy depths of winter, where the evenings draw in early and life becomes internalised,  yet dreaming and yearning for the summer, where time is stretched out in seemingly endless hours of daylight.

In this exhibition I have attempted to expand my painting language further by incorporating the male form into my compositions for the first time.  However, for me the subject matter is the starting point to a painting, not the end.  So I try to give the figure, whether male or female, the same treatment as I would a vase of flowers.  I want the figure to just exist and sit right in the painting, and not to story tell and distract.  My overall objective is to produce well balanced paintings, where the beautiful properties of the colour and the texture of paint predominates the picture plane.  I see my job as a facilitator to this end and by using sympathetic subject matter and by using the compositional elements and devices that I have built up and developed over the years, I attempt to reach the paint’s maximum potential. Link