Martina O'Brien, Expanse 2 @ Waterside Theatre

Dublin based artist Martina O'Brien will present her exhibition Expanse 2 in The Cascade Gallery, Waterside Theatre and Arts Centre from Friday 21st October to the end of November 2011. This exhibition is a follow up from her recent shows in The Watergate Theatre, Kilkenny in conjunction with the Kilkenny Arts Office August/ September 2011 and The Sol Art Gallery, Dublin, early October 2011. This body of work is about the internal and external landscape/seascape and the relationship between both. The work is itself a unique hybrid of painting and emotion. It is made up of layers of paint and mixed media and there is a contradiction between the actual and the inner which is emphasized by the three-dimensions that this layering produces. The internal landscape - beneath the skin and within the psyche, is the artist's inspiration. Light from the outside world refracts through a mosaic of experiences, paints fractals of light and colour, patterns within. Darkness, its counterpoint, has its place within providing weight and substance. Its hues echo the recessive, retrograde and painful - allowing a more nuanced experience. The internal landscape is never simply a reflection of what is seen, never a reproduction of the world as is. Rather, it is how we organise our experiences and sensations, and how we choose to engage in the world as we understand it; it is what defines us. Martina's work takes a form that challenges traditional ideas of what seascapes and landscapes should look like. Martina says of her work - ‘In my work boundaries blur and definition is understated; but the balance is never lost. My studies in photography have led me to the point where I can deliberately manipulate structure to achieve my desired result, by shifting the focus from the external to the internal.'


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