Kenny Gallery show puts a focus on light

A selection of new paintings by Arthur Maderson is currently on display at the Kenny Gallery in the City’s Liosbán Estate.

Maderson is an artist who specialises in the representation of light – from Ireland to the South of France. He is a  former student of the Camberwell Student of Art in London, where he was awarded the Anna Berry Student of the Year Award in 1963.

His parallel interest in both psychology and psychiatry led him into the field of art therapy and he was an Art Therapist for nine years at Park Prewett Psychiatric Hospital, Basingstoke, Hampshire.

He had continued to paint after college, but in the early 1980s, he destroyed most of his early work. Maderson, who moved to Ireland in the late 1980s, began to hold major one-man exhibitions throughout the UK, Ireland and mainland Europe from the mid-80s. His works have also been displayed in major mixed exhibitions in the US.  He won the Royal Hibernian Academy Abbey Studio Award in 1993 for the most distinguished picture. He has subsequently represented Ireland in a number of prestigious shows. Maderson is also a regular exhibitor with the Royal Academy (RA) in London. He currently lives between Waterford and a village in the South of France.

Maderson’s main concern is capturing what we see rather than what we think we see, and he is also fascinated by the way light is painted. That’s captured in his Lismore River Pool and Tallow Horse Fair series, which feature in Kennys.