On the Town: Many artists and actors gathered to applaud James Hanley at his sixth solo show this week.
"He's a wonderful storyteller. They are like frames from a movie, like moments captured in time," said producer John McColgan, chair of the Abbey Centenary Committee, who opened the show, Souvenir, at Dublin's Solomon Gallery.
Hanley, who is a full member of the Royal Hibernian Academy, is better known as a portrait painter, Maureen Potter, Bertie Ahern being among his subjects. His recently unveiled triptych to commemorate the Abbey Centenary now hangs in the theatre's foyer.
In Souvenir, he said, he put the images in his paintings "through this blue colour, this unifying aperture, which reminds you of polaroids . . . cinema and stills".
"I love the Virgin Mary blue," said Niall Mac Monagle, an English teacher from Wesley College, Dublin. The paintings, he said, "just take you places - from Ballyvaughan to Berlin".
Actor Donal Beecher and Ian FitzGibbon, director of the film Showbands, which is due out in early January, both loved From Studio, Trinity Street, a painting of a man, seen from above, walking on a footpath.
Actor Michael McElhatton, who is currently in The Gate's production of Conor McPherson's play, Shining City, also came along to view Hanley's new work. Patrick Sutton, Arts Council member and director of the Gaiety School of Acting, chatted to actor Pat Laffan. Artists Mick O'Dea, Patrick Pye and Taffina Flood (with her baby daughter, Molly O'Nolan) were also at the show. Film director Paddy Breathnach, whose film Man About Dog, a comedy about greyhounds, is currently in the cinemas, was there too, with Joni Clarke, a teacher at St Francis Junior National School in Darndale.