I’m excited to invite you to my solo exhibition “Lands & Legends” at Gallery Chaman, Seoul, South Korea. 

Official opening July 19th 2023 from 4 to 7pm and the exhibition will run from July 20th – August 8th from 11am – 7pm.

The online invitation with further details and press is available by clicking here

For my solo exhibition with StART+ I’ve created two bodies of work. My collections usually consist of landscapes and figurative work done separately so I’m excited to get the opportunity to show both together. The first collection is of mystical abstracted landscapes in keeping with my ongoing series on this theme. I find the drumlins and lakes of my hometown Cavan in Ireland especially emotive and recurring in my paintings but also every time I travel a piece of where I’ve been makes itself known in my work at some stage. I paint these landscapes as a place for the viewer to escape to and meditate in, to walk around them in their mind and recharge their energy and spirit. My process is a bit like staring at clouds, I lay down colours without any preconceived ideas and when I see images forming that remind me of something or trigger an idea then I develop the scene on the canvas. I’ve found that everyone will see something different in my work and that is how it should be. Even if my unconscious inspiration has grounding in our reality, I see my landscapes as mystical places from another world named after my zodiac sign called “The Land Of Gemini”.

While visiting Korean temples last year I was struck by how the way I paint the mountainous topography of Ireland resembles some traditional Korean landscape paintings which was a surprise to me as I was unfamiliar with Korean traditional painting before I visited the country. 

During the StART Art Fair in Seoul last year many visitors were intrigued about the stories behind paintings I exhibited there based on “The Fairy Stories Of Oscar Wilde” so this motivated me to create another collection for StART+ based on Korean folktales. One of my past collections was inspired by legends of Cavan so I have a deep interest in folklore and for these stories to be handed down through generations. My past research into Irish folklore allowed me to compare and contrast with Korean folklore which I really enjoyed. I am intrigued about how Irish folktales tend to have unhappy endings and Korean folktales tend to have positive endings and what this could mean about our cultures. There are parallels between both countries’ folklore with the use of animals especially rabbits and deer and the finding of great treasures; in Ireland the leprechauns crock of gold and in Korea treasures are found in nature by good people but change if they are found by the wrong person, something which also shows up in Irish legends, the shape shifting of something valuable.

I am a big animal lover so another thing I found fascinating during my time in Seoul was all the beautifully groomed little dogs that I could happily spend all day following around the city, so they have also made an appearance in the show as a modern take on contemporary culture in South Korea.

Address: Gallery Chaman, (Cheongdam-dong) La Terrace B1, 9 Hakdong-ro 81-gil, Gangnam-gu, Seoul Korea 

View the full exhibition here