Sea fields

Hamilton Gallery, 4 Castle St, Sligo Mon-Sat 10am-5pm Until Jun 30 071-9143686 hamiltongallery.ie

Sligo’s Hamilton Gallery, with Martina Hamilton at the helm, maintains a first-rate exhibitions programme – not just, say, displaying selections of existing work by particular artists, but actually making shows from scratch with distinctive new bodies of work. Such was the recent case with Vivienne Roche and now with Mary Lohan, whose paintings, rooted in the coastal landscape, have long been linked to the northwest.

We are used to a pictorial template formed by horizontal bands of land, sea and sky in Lohan’s paintings. In her recent work, gathered together in Sea Fields, she engages with a new element: the patterns, textures and contours of cultivated fields abutting the ocean. Indicative of timeless human labour and habitation, they are clearly man-made, yet also dependent on and woven intimately into the natural fabric of the earth.

Lohan builds her compositions with creamy blocks and swathes of pale colour, enlivened by brilliant, watery light.

Can't see that? Catch these:A bumper crop of art school graduate exhibitions, from NCAD to IADT, Limerick to GMIT and more.