Irish Times art critic Aidan Dunne reviews the Visual Arts.
Reviewed: Watercolour Society of Ireland 150th Exhibition, County Hall, Dún Laoghaire, until October 9th
Like the Royal Hibernian Academy, the Watercolour Society of Ireland is an artist-run organisation; again like the RHA, its annual show has been a moveable feast. Venues have included the Molesworth Hall, the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery and, indeed, the RHA Gallagher Gallery. For while the RHA now has a permanent home, the society has recently found itself outside the city centre, in Dún Laoghaire's County Hall - in the event a large, bright, airy venue.
The society, which had its beginnings in a drawing group set up in Waterford in 1870, is fairly specific in its scope. Its members aim to promote the use and appreciation of watercolour "and associated media". Watercolour is a particularly exact and demanding medium. Oil paint is almost decadently compliant. You can splash acrylic around and come up with something nice and colourful. But if you don't get watercolour right the best you can hope for is mediocrity, and it's far more likely that it will just be a mess.
So the business of craft is important. As with print media, it can happen that practitioners become obsessed with craft aspects of what they are doing, to the detriment of the work itself. But without a sound technical basis you cannot emerge with anything worthwhile at all. It's a question of balance. It would be an exaggeration to say that every member of the society is technically proficient, just as one couldn't say that every academician is an accomplished representational painter. But a substantial number of members combine technical proficiency with artistic flair.
One of the specialist branches of watercolour is botanical illustration, which is a discipline in its own right. The doyen of Irish botanical illustrators, Wendy Walsh, is a member, and her work is included in the annual show, as is that of a younger arrival on the scene, Susan Sex, who has produced many botanical watercolours in the past few years, including working with Brendan Sawyers on a book, Ireland's Wild Orchids. Patricia Jorgensen has also established a niche. Grania Langrishe shows very good examples, too.
What the show lacks, perhaps, is someone like Elizabeth Blackadder, who combines accuracy of botanical observation with tremendous boldness and vigour of treatment. The nearest thing at County Hall may be Neil Shawcross's typically flamboyant burst of vivid red in his flower study.
And there are other painters in the exhibition who, while not strictly making botanical illustrations, display great feeling for the form, colour and texture of plants.
Anne McLeod's studies of mallow, foxgloves and honeysuckle are all fine pieces of work, for example, and Marion McKeever shows tremendous sensitivity towards her subject in her garden studies, capturing the overall richness of growth.
If you have the requisite ability, and perhaps the experience, watercolour suits pictorial precision, and nobody has a surer touch than the society's current president, Nancy Larchet, whose studies of Dublin are perfectly judged and atmospherically accurate. Her flower composition is as well organised and inventive as a fugue, something that might also apply to John Brobbel's work. The academician Arthur Gibney is well known as a proficient architectural watercolourist. Ann J. Mina has a good go at the form with her study Jealous Wall, Belvedere. In a different vein, her Inisheer study has the ring of truth.
By its nature, watercolour has been a great medium for traveller's tales. It's portable and quick, ideal for recording impressions in far-flung locations. Several watercolourists here continue this honourable tradition. Thomas Wilson's studies of Turkey are extremely well made with, again, a nice, judicious, precise touch. George McCaw has a very specific, personal style, with a lovely quality of line and understated, airy use of paint in his reports from Portugal, Sicily and Norway.
Bill Gatt makes good use of an informal, linear, illustrative style, as does, comparably Niall Meagher. Valerie Moffy Empey's style is very much her own. Her small, intricate, linear compositions have a distinctive quality of their own. Despite the fine detail, they never seem cluttered or fussy. Kay Doyle's work combines pictorial flair with intimations of deeper layers of meaning.
Several artists take on big production numbers. Hard to carry through, though Carey Clarke is nothing if not a technical perfectionist, and his Tuscan view is fairly outstanding. While technically exemplary, his other piece, a view of Jerusalem, doesn't seem to call for the level of pictorial attention he gives it.
Ken Clarken aims for a Turneresque sweep in his large-scale compositions. They are very capably done, but they run the risk of coming across as pastiche. Terence O'Connell sets himself problems in rendering complex forms and textures in his work, then solves them very convincingly, while Liam O'Herlihy employs a quasi-photographic drop-out effect with elan.
There is humour in Susan O'Doherty's good-natured pieces but also real flair in her grasp of pattern and colour. Among other outstanding works are those by Jayne Barry, Philip Y. Davies, Pamela Leonerd, Blaithin O'Ciobhain, Eleanor Harbison, Tom Ryan, Brian Reilly, Pam Skerrett, Nora Scott, John Keating and Richard Whyte and one really strong figure study by Nina Patterson. It's an enjoyable show that rewards some close observation.
Incidentally, to mark the 150th anniversary of the society's exhibitions, the National Gallery of Ireland is holding an exhibition of watercolours by some 45 past members, including some of the best-known names in Irish art history, such as Jack B. Yeats, Mildred Anne Butler, Evie Hone, Rose Barton, Sir William Orpen and Paul Henry, from October 6th until December 12th.
