I am exhibiting at Kelly's Resort Hotel, Rosslare for the Wexford Festival Opera from the 19th October to 5th November. In this exhibition 'Present Moments' I am exploring domestic spaces/objects and ordinary scenes, engaging the viewer in a dialog of perception and reflection. This varied body of work is a contemplative exploration of symbolic fragments from my surrounding environment. I appreciate looking closely at small, yet quite ordinary objects to find the richness within them. These subtleties are sometimes overlooked by the passer-by. My paintings come from quiet observation and a curiosity in finding the stillness of a moment.

Any queries please contact me on 087 6169924.

The extraordinary in the ordinary

Art ceases to have a purpose if it doesn’t somehow facilitate you to see better.  And to see at all in art is an acquired skill. Looking and seeing might seem indivisible but one requires focus and the other, not always. Seeing is the commonality between the artist and the viewer, although for the artist the act of seeing is as innate and natural as breathing. I see, therefore I am. The immanence of seeing truly is as omnipresent as faith or the lack thereof. Most artists want to see better. And to see better is to exorcise with the scalpel of intuition. An artist should know when to walk away. When you stand before a Caroline Ward, the first precept of seeing, actually seeing, is to do nothing, which runs contrary to the current state of exhibiting where every work is deluged by the lens of the phone before moving swiftly on to the next victim. Transience without fulfilment. The witless and narcissistic selfie is neither seeing nor experience whereas every fresh rendezvous with a new Ward still life is an act of contemplation, where the communion across space and time is palpable. And the communion is made possible because Ward has used everything that she knows about her art up to the point that she leaves the scalpel aside. By then she will have gone beyond what she thought she knew and made something of her own. It is after the beyond which is at the root of an unusual sensation standing before great art. Strangeness. Strangeness is not alienation. Strangeness defines individuality, it is the segue between skill and meaning which defines ‘ars’, the etymological word for art, but specifically strangeness is what makes great work continue to reverberate long after you have left the gallery. So, when you have finished trying to distil the painstaking execution of detail in a Ward still life, take a step back, allow the work to breathe, allow it to sculpt how you see and shape your understanding of what it means to reflect on the quotidian poetry of the artist’s silent presences. Caroline disinters the extraordinary from the ordinary and gifts you the choice of fully reinserting yourself into the now. By seeing. Seeing with your eyes is fulfilment. Seeing through the lens of your phone isn’t, but the choice is yours.

Don’t waste it.                               (Tom Mooney, Programmer Wex-Art) 2023