TJIBBE Hooghiemstra is a Dutch artist who has spent periods of time on the Aran Islands, Tory Island and in Mayo over the past few years.
His current show of mixed media drawings, executed in crayon, paint, pencil and charcoal, relate to the experiences of these visits.
Hooghiemstra chooses a wide variety of papers for his support material, apparently avoiding only whatever looks too pristine.
Some images appear on scraps of light, clear paper, some on immense rectangles of brown wrapping paper. In one corner of the gallery, Hooghiemstra has even sketched across the white washed wall.
It comes as no surprise then that the marks on these surfaces are equally diverse. Flowers, boats and twists of landscape are orchestrated around lashings of empty space. Some are fleshed out forms, others shivery and unapologetically sketchy.
Strangely, through all this lightness, this high pitched aesthetic of preliminarity, the most developed idea is a limp, antiquated notion of the hard virtues of the western seaboard and, by extension, perhaps, of Ireland.
