Maeve McCarthy moved to rural France in 2017. The artist responds to her new living and working environment in her latest body of work and reflects on the relationship between place, memory, identity, and what it means to call somewhere home. There is also a sense of regeneration in the work, as she documents the seasonal cycle of the garden, and the laying down of fond memories of a good life, in her new home.
On a formal level, McCarthy continues her exploration of the contrasting qualities of light and atmosphere - mainly nighttime and twilight - begun in her rural paintings. A series of large-scale works are counterpointed by small tempera and oil works on panel.
Writing about the work in the autumn issue of The Irish Arts Review, Cristín Leach said of McCarthy's work that it is about "a deep sense of place, memory as a generational bequest, the liminal gap between memory and presence, and the dance between belonging and feeling alone".
Born in 1964, Maeve McCarthy spent several years in the USA following graduation from NCAD and has also worked in film animation in Ireland and Germany. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, including the BP Portrait Awards at the National Portrait Gallery, London. McCarthy has won several awards, mainly for portraiture. Her portrait of Maeve Binchy is in the collection of the National Gallery of Ireland. Her work is also held by the National Museum, the Haverty Trust, the National Self-Portrait Collection, the OPW, the Royal Dublin Society and the Royal College of Physicians. She has been a full member of the RHA since 2007. This will be her sixth solo exhibition at The Molesworth Gallery.
