Bringing it all back home
The Tramore Art Group exhibition was a great success
Tramore Art Group hosted its annual art exhibition in the Church of Ireland on Church Rd. Tramore last week.
It’s an event that draws a big attendance each year and a number of people travel to the exhibition each year with the single attendance of buying pictures. There is no greater thrill for any artist than acknowledgment of talent. Whenever someone buys one of your pictures, novels, sculptures or scripts, there is great encouragement to continue to produce artistic work. It doesn’t always work but there is no shortage of buyers at the Tramore Art Group Exhibition.
It takes courage to exhibit because not everyone will enjoy your work. Some viewers will see too much blue, others not enough. Some may find too much detail while others will feel that a surfacing submarine would bring so much to a seascape. That’s life! …but not the life of those wonderful artists that cannot sit on the sidelines because there’s just so much they have to say in their pictures.
Clearly, there’s always going to be a Tramore connection. Marie Kenneally’s ‘Ronan’s Bay’ features an interesting view of the twin towers of Brownstown Head from the land side while her ‘Bay at Twilight’ is a shadowy mystery of skeletal landscape over a moonlit bay. Terry Power’s ‘Rinn na Searc’ (Shark Point) mixes sand and vibrant blue landscape in a striking pose while her ‘Wave Dodging’ kids are covered in an explosion of surf down at the Lifeguards Hut on the end of the prom.
Maria Delany’s ‘Metal Man’ landscape is a sunlit treasure while Renee Power’s watercolour of the iconic landmark takes up the Westown view in the gentlest of mix of pastel greens and lemon and grey. Renee also features a folksy mother with child in hand guarded by the family dog on a deserted beach with Newtown Head a frothy distance away.
Tramore artist Billy Bryant, who opened the exhibition, has an impressionist’s viewpoint in watercolour simply entitled ‘Tramore’. It’s a fascinating vaulted collage of the rooftops of the town under the towering Gothic parish Church of the Holy Cross that reminds us all of the vibrant community that lives in Tramore.
There is a joy in the pictures that find inspiration in the natural world. Billy Bryant’s Bullfinches are uber proud in their puffed out red breasts. Paula Brackenbrry’s ‘What ???’ is a beyond startled bird in blue and a delightful mouse under a brolly is neatly summed up in the title ‘’It’s Raining again’; Terry Power’s ‘Dungarvan Longboarders’ are a pair of seals on a flat rock and a pair of black and white puffins about to share a meal of fresh fish are captured in ‘Gimme Some’ although my favourite has to be Terry Power’s magnificent hawk in flight in ‘Flying High’. Bernie Kane’s ‘Kittiwakes’ sit suspended against a rock while her smartass ‘Puffin’ watches all and sundry from a bed of pink and yellow blossoms.
Rosemary Chapman’s work is magnificent. Muscular, angular, pulsating with dramatic movement everywhere. ‘Turbulent Tide’ is a multi-focus picture that throbs with the drama and colours of a frothy-green ocean driven by Atlantic tides. It may be ‘Morning tide out’ but danger lurks behind every wave and, while swans may nest and feed in ‘The Graceful Dips’, the energy of a miniature world of nature envelops their every movement.
Land and townscapes are here as well. Paulyne Corby’s landscapes of Dunhill Castle and Westown are familiar and comforting; Ethna Bayne’s ‘Dún Chaoin’ brings me back to my teenage years in Corca Dhuibhne, and Marie Kenneally’s ‘Ladies’ Slip’ sees me down where I swim every day in summer.
There’s just so much to enjoy in this exhibition from Tramore Artists.
