At The Origin Gallery, 3rd – 16th December 2015

SHUTTERING IN AND OUT LIKE DAPPLING LIGHT – MEMORIES CATCHING HOLD, FLICKERING INTO VIBRANT IMAGES…

“My work concerns itself with a deep love of nature and the landscape.  And with memory. On arriving in Cill Rialaig in Kerry, I realised that this is a special place –  not alone for its isolated beauty, nestled into the headland facing the ocean, or the traces of the vibrant community that once lived there.  But also the sensory bombardment of sound, smell, colour and light that brought me to a place enabling deeply-buried memories to filter gradually to the surface.
My work describes the soft luminescence filtering  through thegrasses in the fields around the village. It permeates through the rushes of the bogland and hedgerows, casting shadows, fading and brightening again, creating an ephemeral image whichstays on the retina for only a moment before it changes.  Framing the landscape is thesea and the world that exists under its surface – the unrelenting movement of the waters.Starting each day by walking upthe hillside, looking out at the ever-changing seas, the light flooding through me, I observed and gathered the native plants around me – foxglove, sheep’s bit, hemlock, bell heather, wild carrot, figwort, rushes and grasses.  

I walked the shoreline at Ballinskelligs searching for elements of the ocean to use in my work. Such a wealth of plants and wildlife in this place – I even saw stoats running along the dry-stone walls of the village as I worked. While making this work, memories trickled back of summers spent in Kerry as a child, in particular memories of my father -he instilled in his children a love of landscape, nature and wildlife, he had a passion for the ocean, for sailing and climbing. One vivid memory came to me of a day spent climbing Mount Brandon with my father and my sisters – of taking a rest on the ascent and lying back in the springy heather and looking up into the blue blue sky to see a Skylark hovering high above singing its intense complicated song.  I can still smell and feel the heat and stillness of that day.

My father’s life was taken by the sea in 2001.  This work is in part a celebration of his life”.

‘And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.’

– excerpt from ”Lake Isle of Innisfree’ by W.B Yeats

‘White Heat’ Acrylic on Aluminium 60cm x 90cm

‘Angelica’ Acrylic on Aluminium 60cm x 60cm

Kathrine Geoghegan “Firefly-Light”

‘There Midnight’s All A Glimmer’. Inspired by ‘Lake Isle of Innisfree’ by W.B. Yeats. Acrylic on Aluminium. 60x60cm

‘Late Evening’ Acrylic on Aluminium 60cm x 60cm