A Piano in the Kitchen and Other Stories

Draíocht, Blanchardstown Centre, Dublin Mon-Sat 10am-6pm Until Feb 16 draiocht.ie01-8852622

There’s an easy, conversational quality to Una Sealy’s paintings and graphic work. Come upon it in the midst of a group exhibition and it can make everything around look suddenly stilted and formal. The title of her latest exhibition, A Piano in the Kitchen Other Stories, strikes just the right note.

Gathered together, Sealy’s paintings, several of them very ambitious in terms of scale and complexity, demonstrate that there is no division between life and art for her.

On one level, an air of relaxed domesticity dominates as we seem to wander from room to room, encountering family, friends and visitors.

In Sealy’s empathic attention, however, there is always a strong intimation of inner life and preoccupations in her subjects, a suggestion that we are glimpsing single instants in life stories that contain darkness as well as light. It is this underlying somberness that gives her work a gravity, which can take you unawares.

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