New art exhibition puts The Burren in spotlight

Arts Week with Judy Murphy

The Burren’s diverse landscape and seascape come under the microscope in Triptych, A Burren Journey, an exhibition of new paintings by Michael Gemmell, Jim McKee and Manus Walsh which opens at the City’s Kenny Gallery this Friday, May 27.

Dr Brendan Dunford of BurrenBeo Trust will officially open the show at 6pm in the Liosbán gallery.

Michael Gemmell, Jim McKee and Manus Walsh have had a long artistic connection with the Burren, which is one of the finest examples of a glacio-karst landscape. It is composed of limestone pavements with criss-crossing cracks known as ‘grikes’, leaving isolated rocks called ‘clints’. The area is renowned for its many rare species of flora and fauna, with Arctic, Mediterranean and Alpine plants side-by-side.

The ‘otherworldly’ quality of the Burren landscape has attracted visual artists for decades.  Some of them have even relocated to the area including two of the artists showing at Kennys. McKee and Walsh are residents, while Michael Gemmell has been a visitor since his years in Art College in Limerick.

Michael Gemmell, who was born in Derry in 1950, studied at the National College of Art & Design and at Limerick College of Art.  He initially ran a stained-glass studio but gave it up to devote himself to his long term dream, painting.

His describes his work as being something akin to “a bird’s-eye view” of the Burren.

“I concentrate on the effect rather than merely depicting the scene, in order to achieve a delicate balance of abstract and representational imagery through colour, tone and form,” he says. “I hope to express a spiritual peace through the landscape setting that is common to most of my work and that my paintings convey a calm beauty revealing the power of nature”.

Jim McKee, who is also a well- established musician, has been a professional artist since 2001, exhibiting throughout Ireland, the UK, USA and France.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.