Local News | From Clonakilty

A double exhibition of work by painters William Grace and Katarzyna Gajewska, entitled “The Beauty of the World hath made me glad,” was recently shown at Buckley Fine Art Gallery in the town. The show offered yet more evidence of the quality of the art hung on the walls of this gallery on a daily basis. To their credit, the owners seem to get the best of established and emerging creative talent in Ireland.
Grace presented a selection of paintings of quiet rural landscapes executed with fascinating skill and in a manner that reflects the artist’s love of graphic design. He scours the surface of the painting with a knife then applies a palette of bright, uplifting colors, giving the final work an appearance similar to that of a mosaic or stained-glass.
Gajewska is an emerging artist of undeniable originality. A graduate of the Warsaw Academy of Fine Art, where she was named Student of the Year, and the recipient of a Ministry of Culture scholarship, this young artist specializes in mixed-media paintings produced thanks to a technique that is at once rigorous and chaotic. Both types of paintings on show here (mixed media-on-canvas and mixed media-on newspaper, the latter commissioned especially by the gallery) depict mostly feminine faces wearing expressions of supplication or ecstasy against wild abstract backgrounds.
Overall, this was a terrific show and, since the gallery is still hanging some of these artist’s work, people should get there to witness two talents of the contemporary art world.

Submitted by Donal O'Sullivan on Wednesday, December 16th, 2009