Work - Shaping (Rachel) Painting

Orlaith Cullinane began her graduate studies at Chelsea School of Art in London, holds a BA (Hons) in Fine Art from Belfast School of Art and has undertaken extensive post-graduate studies in painting and drawing. She has been a member of Bridge Street Studios since 2015. She has received bursaries and awards from Arts Council Ireland, FE McWilliam Gallery, Northern Ireland, Louth County Council (Create Louth) and been awarded residencies in Iceland (Olafsfjordur), France (Les Perles, Barjols, Provence), UK (Natural History Museum, London) and Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Annaghmakerrig. Orlaith has exhibited at the Royal Ulster Academy annual show in Belfast, in group shows internationally and held solo shows at the Triain Arts Centre, Armagh City and the Markethouse Theatre and Gallery, Armagh City. Her work is held in private, public and corporate collections in Ireland, UK and USA and she has completed numerous private commissions. Previously she worked in sculpture and print, costume design, short film and animation in figurative and abstracted styles. “Drawing – mainly using pen or charcoal – is the basis and begininning of all my work. As a way of finding, recording and working out ideas, of getting to know a subject in an almost tactile sense, as a method of study and observation, as a means of reflection and expression – drawing is essential to my practice. Currently my paintings and drawings are figurative and focus on living beings. Capturing and evoking movement, gesture, expression and chance symbolism are my main concerns. My interests lie in explorations of the contrast of everyday subjects with the mythical, symbolic, psychological and narrative elements that can resonate in small everyday scenes. My current body of work, started with a series of studies of the artists at work, The paintings and drawings illuminate the layers that make up the artists’ relationships with their practices and their workspaces. The work seeks to characterize the relationship between the subject and the focus of their attention – the triangulation of the eye, the hand and the work. The same triangulation is scaled up between myself, the subject and the painting. It is a two way process with an exchange of energies between observer and observed and when it gathers momentum and rhythm to create a sense of flow, symbolic elements in the scene come forward to be emphasized in the piece.”