During the rolling pandemic lockdowns of 2020 and 2021, Angie Shanahan and Bridget Flannery, artist friends since their 1980s Crawford Art College days, began what is best described as an immersive collaboration. It was anchored in the complementary practices of river-walking, river-swimming and river-drawing, with Shanahan belayed in Cork by the River Lee and Flannery moored by the River Barrow in Carlow. In 2022, they held a joint show called Watermarks in the Project 12 Studio space on Wandesford Quay in Cork City. It was billed as “a daily mark-making project”. There is something about water that connects us profoundly with each other, and with place.
The earliest painting in Shanahan’s half of The Fresh to the Salt, their 2025 two-person show at Custom House Gallery in Westport, was produced in 2017. Ebb and Flow (2017), with its partially submerged steps, glimpse of salt-sodden rope and floating twists of seaweed, is a key image in this new and re-gathered body of work. In 2016, Shanahan found herself looking down and thinking about transitions following the death of her mother. The place where the edge of the water meets the start of the land is a departure point. It’s an invitation to step from gravity-filled air into the buoyancy of liquid, from one form of wisdom towards a different kind of knowledge, maybe even from one version of yourself into another way of being. Bonded by water and drawing and paint, The Fresh to the Salt is an exhibition that Shanahan and Flannery planned together before Bridget’s unexpected and untimely death in April 2024.
Shanahan’s work in this exhibition cannot be separated from the time of loss she has encountered and traversed in recent years, with the passing of family members as well as close friends. The painting Ballyquinn (2025) marks the date of Bridget’s first anniversary. It’s the view from “the ledge” at Ballyquinn in Ardmore, County Waterford, where Bridget would sit, before or after swimming with friends, to chat and breathe, and to look at the body of seawater she couldn’t get to during lockdown. If Ebb and Flow is a painting about edges and moving through space and time, it is also an invitation to think about the kind of bodily pleasure experienced by the open-armed woman in the painting Girl Afloat (2023) or the drawing Outstretched and Floating (2024). It’s a reminder that the leap from the land into the water is a release, a form of letting go. The exhibition Watermarks led to the inclusion of both artists in the National Gallery of Ireland show In Real Life, curated by Anne Hodge in 2024. Among Shanahan’s contributions was the large-scale two-part drawing Heron – River Lines (2022/23), shown again here in Westport.
Kaye Maahs is a beautiful painter, rigorously and instinctively so. She can tell when a painting is working, and she knows absolutely when it is not. She has, in the past, thrown paintings out the studio window when she sees that they have failed. These days, perhaps tempered by experience, she is more likely to wipe the surface completely clean and start again tomorrow. Maahs works wet into wet, which means each painting is made in one go and never allowed to dry until it is finished. Wiping one of her larger pieces away, she could be removing up to twelve hours of intense labour. When an artist can paint this well, the more complicated question is what to paint? Maahs made her name quickly with compellingly vibrant land and seascapes. Her new solo show, False Kingdom, at the Custom House Studios and Gallery in Westport, is part of a series of works about something different. And it marks ten years since her graduation from a fine art painting degree at GMIT in Galway, aged 45.
In ‘The Night King’, a bat is caught stark, white against black: a nocturnal presence, a majestic one. ‘The Night Caller #2’ shows an Irish Plume Moth almost bone-like, skeletal, T-shaped and other-worldly, looking at us. Froggy eyes surface as if posing an amphibious question in ‘Water Treader’. In ‘The Night Traveller’, a thin-winged moth looks slightly off kilter, battling an unseen foe. These paintings speak of cyclical and circadian rhythms, of night beings, busy while we are asleep, alert when we are not.
The Irish word scim describes a thin coating of particles on a physical surface, but it can also mean something more nebulous: a supernatural film that covers the land, a gauzy barrier between worlds, the threshold between consciousness and sleep, a leap between intuition and logic. It has something to do with a different kind of wisdom. It’s a word Maahs found in the writing of Manchán Magan, and a word that works well with the shiny, slipperiness of her chosen ground and medium: oil paint on aluminium. These new paintings are not landscape paintings, but they speak of the land and of feelings, memories and mysteries carried in the harbingers of place.
This exhibition invites the viewer into a liminal space—a deep blue space within another space. Blue, with its associations of depth, vastness, and the unknown, creates an atmosphere of openness and quiet immersion.
By entering, the viewer becomes more than a passive observer; they become part of the artwork. This immersive encounter opens a dialogue between the inner and outer worlds, between what is seen and what is felt.
The paintings explore the relationship between the psyche and the external environment, reflecting how perception shapes our understanding of reality. Often, the outer world mirrors our internal landscape. A recurring motif—the net—serves as both container and filter: a web of memory, emotion, and subconscious patterns. It maps the inner world, and in doing so, transforms our perception of the outer one.
Through abstraction—form, colour, texture, and compositional tension—the works express emotional and narrative layers that resist simple explanation. Hard-edged lines suggest the impulse to control and define, while gestural, intuitive marks reveal vulnerability and openness. This interplay between order and intuition is central.
These works are not meant to be fully understood in a conventional sense. Instead, they offer a language beyond words, giving form to what so often remains unsaid.
Sarah Wren Wilson is a visual artist with a studio at Custom House Studios and Gallery in Westport. Her practice is rooted in painting, using abstraction to explore psychological space, perception, and embodied experience. She holds a BA (Hons) in Fine Art from Loughborough University, an MLitt in Fine Art from the Glasgow School of Art, and an MSc in Art Psychotherapy from Ulster University. In 2020, she completed the Turps Banana Correspondence Painting Programme.
Wren Wilson has exhibited widely across Ireland and internationally. Recent solo exhibitions include In Landing at Supermarket Art Fair, Stockholm with CHS+G (2025), If Only I Knew (Hang Tough Contemporary, 2023), Spectator (Ashford Gallery, RHA, 2022), and PING PONG (Linenhall Arts Centre, 2021). Earlier solo presentations include Eroding Structure (Espacio de Creación Contemporánea, Spain, 2015) and Meddlesome Meeting (Ards Arts Centre, 2018). Her work has also appeared in recent group exhibitions such as Gotten Part 2 (Katie Lindsay Gallery, 2025), Volume I (Outset Gallery, 2024), In and of Itself: Abstraction in the Age of Images (RHA, 2022), and at international venues including the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts (China), Bushwick Studios (New York), and the Royal Scottish Academy (Scotland).
Wren Wilson has received numerous awards and residencies, including recent fellowships at the Ballinglen Arts Foundation (2024) and RHA/IPUT Wilton Park Studios (2021–2022), with further residencies including Hospitalfield (Scotland), Cill Rialaig (Kerry), and Fjuk (Iceland). She has received multiple Arts Council and local authority grants and was shortlisted for the RHA Hennessy Craig Award (2022). Her work is held in public and corporate collections including the Arts Council of Ireland, the Royal Collection (UK), Morgan Stanley, Quilter Cheviot, The Dean Hotel, and private collections worldwide. This exhibition is kindly supported by The Mayo County Council Artist Bursary Scheme, 2025
Thomas Brezing ‘Human Scaffold’
My paintings are multi-layered and often take a number of years to develop. I paint intuitively, it’s happening in the process of damage and repair, over time, in the act of painting and the qualities of paint as material itself – painting as inner travel and discovery.
I call this body of work the ‘Human Scaffold’: I’m interested in the ongoing labour of constructing our own lives; these are deeply personal, probing, engaging, playful, dynamic, colourful and loosely painted canvasses that ply the edge of figurative-abstraction.
My new paintings use the human head as a starting point, they stretch the confines of figurative portraiture, spinning the image out in expressionistic brushstrokes before arriving at a slower, more gestural abstraction. They are anti-portraits of sorts.
They approximate our days and nights of frantic scrolling, measuring faces, comparing, seeking mirrors, until the frenzy folds into a blur of non-recognition. The lively exchange between these imagined characters moves between dialogue and silence, passion and terror, drawing on emotional states that pass from resolution to disintegration and back again.
I have always been fascinated by how we shape our environment to suit our needs and how in turn our immediate surroundings often shape us. From the domestic interiors of homes my exploration of industrialised landscape started in 2019 when I visited five farms in preparation for an exhibition at Limerick City Gallery of Art in 2021. I was immediately impressed with the potential of material to explore through painting. Livestock, hills and fields, corrugated roofs, the chrome, steel and glass of milking parlours, tractors, jeeps, trailers, and sheds provide a wealth of material to explore through painting.
Most of our landscape is industrialised. Appearance can be deceptive. Forests are managed and don’t always consist of native species and much of our landscape, however scenic, is purposed for food production. In many cases a field of grass has often been chemically treated and reseeded with imported seeds to maximise nutrition. Cattle sometimes wear monitors delivering data digitally to the farmer through an app on a smart phone. However, this does not necessarily mean that animals have a bad quality of life. The farmers that I have met were passionate about their farms and had a real duty of care for their animals. They are often the 3rd or 4th generation of farmers at the same location and hold a deep emotional attachment to the land. They are proud of their farms and passionate about what they do. They work extremely hard often with little financial return in comparison to the hours invested. I see a lot of parallels between farmers and artists. It isn’t just a job it is a vocation, a way of life. There are many challenges especially for smaller holdings and some farms will not survive. Often there is nobody to hand the farm on to and the line will end with this generation. These paintings are an attempt to capture a slice of life at this pivotal time in the 6000 years of farming in Ireland.
Mary Burke graduated with an honours BA in Fine Art from NCAD in 1982. She has had eighteen solo exhibitions and has been awarded several international residencies. Awards include a bursary from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation (Montreal), a Golden Fleece Award from the Lillias Mitchell Trust and Visual Arts Bursaries from the Irish Arts Council (2007, 2009, 2020). Most recently she she completed a residency and public art commission at the Dun Laoghaire Baths Artists Studios (2023-24)
Mary is currently making farm paintings as artist in residence at the Airfield Estate in Dundrum in County Dublin
Custom House Studios + Gallery and Mayo College of Further Education, Westport Campus, cordially invite you to the official opening reception for the Mayo College of Further Education Art Level 6 2025 End of Year Exhibition.
Exhibiting Artists are Iryna Bezborodova | Natasha Daly | Orlagh Diskin | Ethan Grady | Olha Haidukova | Constance Kennedy | Skye King | Saoirse Mahon | Emma Murray | Colin Ogg | Roger Philbin | Eduard Rusliakov | Dearbhla Ryan | Daria Shaklieina | Alla Stepova | Krystyna Tapiekhina | Evan Wu |
Evening Course: Betty Gannon | Roisin Murray
After the storm is a sculptural installation by artist Cathy Carman. She dives headfirst into her electrifying bond with the world around her, wrestling with the chaos unleashed by a ferocious storm. A storm that ripped open a portal to the mythic realm, where trees, forest, and their mysterious inhabitants harbour ancient secrets. Armed with fallen branches and limbs of trees the artist has conjured up a show full of towering larger – then – life form, infused with her signature flair for myth, and a wicked twist of wit.
My research into gold mining in South Africa began with a trip to a gold mine in Gauteng Province. This research was facilitated through collaboration with UCD Humanities Institute as the main project artist 2022 – 2024 on their international study ‘Post-extractivist Landscapes and Legacies: Humanities, Artist and Activist Responses’.
www.ucd.ie/humanities/research/chciglobalhumanitiesinstitute2023/
On my return from South Africa, I continued my research by participating in a Critical Theory & Creative Praxis international reading group and learnt a lot more about both legal and illegal mining, particularly through the works of Rosalind C. Morris (The Miner’s Ear and ‘We are Zama Zama’), and other works available through Project Muse. Gold Mine, Gauteng, South Africa, a series of paintings, is my response to what I have experienced and researched about gold mining.
Portraits is a new exhibition of paintings by Will O’Kane, his first solo exhibition since 2014. Inspiration for these works stems from a variety of sources – friends and family, anonymous found imagery, life drawing studies, and memory. The show explores themes of mortality, beauty, emotional experience, and individuality. A core dialogue within the show considers if photography has a dominant relationship over portrait painting. The show also asks what tactile and visual sensations are possible, that only painting can offer.
Bio
Will O’Kane (b. 1979 Mayo) lives and works in Co. Clare. He studied painting in Galway’s GMIT (now ATU) Cluain Mhuire campus. Recent exhibitions include, Visual Presence, Boyle Arts Festival 2024; Ballinglen Museum of Art’s group shows 1st Biennial 2023 and The way that we went in 2021; Figurative Seven at the Courthouse Gallery Ennistymon 2023; Lightning Bolts of Everyday Things, Glór Ennis 2022; and several RHA Annual exhibitions since 2011. He was Shortlisted for the Zurich Portrait Prize in 2018, and included in Mayo Collaborative’s Kathleen Lynn: Insider on the Outside in 2016.
Research and development of this body of work was supported by an Arts Council Agility Award in 2023.
Edel Campbell takes a multidisciplinary approach to making work but drawing is always her starting point. In her current work she makes miniature paper models based on her drawings which she then uses as the central elements of her paintings.
The scenes in her paintings are dislocated but retain the geometry of very simplified forms, giving viewers a clue to their possible scale. The elements within them are artificially lit and often viewed from unusual angles. Structures appear fragile and a little unstable, objects sometimes balance precariously or are temporarily secured in place by tape or blue tack.
Objects and spaces are more than physical structures in her work; they are symbols of lived experiences – ideas, events or childhood memories, but by removing them from their original context they become open to new interpretations.
She references the writing of Gaston Bachelard, in particular his 1958 book ‘The Poetics of Space’, as having informed her understanding of architecture.
Through her work she explores the idea that architectural forms can contain a deeper, emotional resonance, inviting the viewer to reflect on their own relationship to memory, place, and how we construct a sense of our own belonging.
Artists Biography
Edel Campbell is a Dublin based visual artist. She holds a B.A. in Fine Art from The National College of Art and Design, Dublin and an M.Sc in Multimedia Systems from Trinity College Dublin. Edel has exhibited her work in Ireland and abroad. Her paintings are held in many corporate and private collections. Recent selected exhibitions include; The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London (2023, 2024), The RHA Annual Exhibition, Dublin (2022, 2023), The Royal College of Physicians, Dublin (2023), The Dunamaise Art Centre, Portlaoise (2023, 2024) and The Ranelagh Art Festival, Dublin (2024). Previous solo exhibitions in Ireland include, The United Arts Club, Dublin (2004), The Toradh Gallery, Co. Meath (2007) and Cavan County Museum (2008)
Phillip Shiels. New Paintings.
Phillip Shiels presents several new large-scale abstract paintings and smaller works from the last two years. Originally from Dublin, educated and formerly based in Denmark, his work is strongly influenced by Scandinavian painting traditions, combining colouristic elements with references to European expressionist painting.
Throughout the last 40 years, Phillip Shiels’ practice has incorporated work in painting, print-making and drawing.
He is interested in moments of awkwardness or uncertainty in painting. These provide the starting point for a colouristic, neo-expressionist approach.
“My paintings are loosely composed images with multiple elements that never completely connect. For me, painting is often an obscure grasping of varied sources, spatial structures, and fragments. It’s akin to assembling several jigsaw puzzles, where the motif gradually emerges by combining disparate elements, and yet where the pieces never fully fall into place. The doing and undoing of the constructed space of the canvas in the physical process of painting means that one has to try to create connections between the given recognizable elements.”
“Memories of Now”
“You can look down, but you won’t see anything. It’s dark, and you just don’t think about it—it’s just blackness.” That’s what bog swimming is like, and that mysterious environment informs much of the work.
For the past 16 years, Dublin-based artist Olwyn Colgan has immersed herself in the transformative process of painting and print, exploring the essential elements of visual experience, with reference to the evocative boglands of her native Tyrone. Her work evolves organically through materiality, and, like the bogs, the making process itself is many-layered.
While some of Colgan’s paintings are autobiographical, others draw inspiration from the sea and wider aspects of nature. Colgan uses her paintings to explore personal narratives—often evoking the quiet power of the natural world and memories that connect the two.
Approaching her practice intuitively, Colgan embraces accident and discovery— ‘I like not knowing how it’s going to turn out. I just batter away at it until it feels right.’ She has long been fascinated by William Blake and ideas of Romanticism that links her practice to contemporary neo-Romanticism—her work is characterized by a unique fusion of the otherworldly and the representational.
She combines a variety of materials—including paper, ink, watercolour, and acrylics—blending collage, printmaking, and painting techniques. This diverse approach allows her to explore the depth of her themes while conveying these stories through a muted colour palette, seeking to evoke a sense of atmosphere.
Ultimately, Colgan’s work creates “memories of now,” capturing moments in time that invite reflection in the future. These landscapes and personal experiences are the stories that shape her world. Through this, she aims to offer viewers a space for reflection and introspection, allowing them to access their own emotions and experiences, perhaps seeing their own stories mirrored through these pictures.
Colgan’s practice has been shaped by residencies at The Cill Rialaig Project and Tyrone Guthrie, Annaghmakerrig. Her recent work has been included in group shows at Ardgillan Gallery, Dublin 2024; Boyle Arts Festival (Invited Artist), Kings House, Co. Roscommon 2023 & 2022; and RUA Annual Exhibition 2021 & 2022. Olwyn’s most recent achievements include the 2024 Agility Arts Council Award.
The Place of Care
This series of gestures reflects daily family life as the ‘new domestic’ from the perspective of the neglected everyday routine during the distractive digital age.
The routines and familiarities of home life like eating breakfast in the morning, playing, and getting ready for school, hide a special sense of bond and connectivity shared amongst family members. Through repetition, this bond turns into a sense of security and a feeling of belonging. Care and belonging can become overlooked while our collective focus shifts into a visual-feedback-based daily life. This can result in a break in connection and a restructuring in the hierarchy of familiar behavior patterns.
This exhibition aims to focus on the overlooked elements of the domestic sphere that are silent participants in the routines of family life. The gestures illustrate the repetitive practice of the family mundane while it aims to re-establish connection among members.
’YOU ARE INVITED! Please join us this Sunday 26 January from 12-2pm for an afternoon reception with refreshments to celebrate two exhibitions open at CHG+S, to hear from the artists and with introductory remarks for Lea Farrell by Geraldine O’Reilly.
Nuala O’Sullivan is a Limerick based artist. She graduated with a BA in Fine Art (Painting) from Limerick School of Art and Design in 2006 before completing a Fine Art Masters Degree in 2013.
O’Sullivan’s work uses both photography and painting to explore how the past influences the stories we construct to make sense of the present. Alongside this the aesthetic and culture of the 1950s have strong visual resonances for her.
She has exhibited extensively including solo exhibitions at Limerick Museum, Ballina Art Centre, Co Mayo; The Church Gallery, LSAD; Draiocht, Dublin; Signal Arts Centre, Bray; and Enniskillen Arts Festival. Selected work was included in Annual Exhibitions at Eigse, Carlow, the RUA Show, Belfast and the RHA Dublin.
Group exhibitions include ‘Person/Presence/Perception touring exhibition with the OPW 2023, GOMA Waterford Annual Exhibition 2022, Known Unknowns’ 3 person show LCGA; ‘Visions of Now’ LCGA; ‘Personal Selection’ at LSAD Limerick; ‘Essays from the House of Memory’, Ormston House Limerick; ‘RDS Student Awards Exhibition’, Dublin. She exhibited in Quimper France in 2012 and in 2014 showed work in the New York Foundation for the Arts in New York with the idir group.
Collections include Northern Trust, UL, Roadbridge, Limerick County Council, Laois County Council, LIT, and private collections.
’YOU ARE INVITED! Please join us this Sunday 26 January from 12-2pm for an afternoon reception with refreshments to celebrate two exhibitions open at CHG+S, to hear from the artists and with introductory remarks for Lea Farrell by Geraldine O’Reilly.
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