Reviews

Saturday October 16, 2004 - Eivlin Roden - Sunday Tribune.

“…Paul Kelly is a north county Dublin painter from Rush and his work has been exhibited at the Gorry Gallery since the early 1990’s as well as at the Royal Hibernian Academy. His awards include the James Kennedy Memorial Award for Portraiture at the RHA (1991) and an artist of the year award from the Ireland fund of Great Britain in 2000. Two years ago he went out to Lambay Island for the first time and, over the course of several trips, built up a collection of over 70 paintings which are included in the present exhibition.

All the paintings are oil on board and each achieves a kind of luminosity reminiscent of earlier landscape artists. Very attractive are the garden paintings, including Garden Path and Hazy Day, with light dappling the plants in an old fashioned timeless garden. North courts, Lambay Castle, gives a good view of the renowned architect ~Sir Edwin Lutyens’ remodelling of the castle in the early years of the 20th Century.

But most of all, these paintings are studies, in the real sense of the word. The subject matter in each might be very small, like Jane Austen’s two-inch piece of ivory, but each is imbued with the vision of an inner eye.

For anyone interested in sea or skyscapes, there is a wealth of choice, from sunny days to misty mornings to glowing evenings. Lambay Island is not large, but this exhibition shows it from a multiplicity of viewpoints. There are no people in any of the paintings but there is the odd cow, prow of a boar, and several views of corners, and angles of the castle and the cottages on the island.

All the paintings are framed in dull gold traditional “Whistler” frames, a simple and uncluttered method which still is broad enough to set off the works, the softness of the gold highlights the wonderful colour palette that Paul Kelly uses” Take a shine to luminous Lambay landscapes, fine art section, Saturday October 16, 2004 Eivlin Roden Sunday Tribune.