Three Square Miles

One of the most important abstract painters in the north-west of Ireland, Josephine Kelly developed her unique vision early in her artistic career.
The landscape of a very particular corner of her native Donegal is her singular preoccupation. These paintings are intimate, gentle and balanced in composition; rich and imaginative in colour. They are about the landscape she inhabits, the local townlands and her daily passage through them rather than the spectacular, sweeping landscape vistas of tourist brochures. Clonglash, Druminderry, Clonblosk and Clamperland – four townlands on the outskirts of Buncrana – are her ‘Three Square Miles’. The authentic flavour of the west of Ireland pervades her work.
Born in Buncrana, Co. Donegal, Josephine studied Fine Art at the University of Ulster graduating in 1997. She has exhibited extensively in Ireland and also in Paris and London over the past 20 years. Her paintings are held in many of the important public and private collections including the OPW collection, The Civil Service Collection, Northern Ireland, IBEC, The Housing Executive at NI and The Carvel Group.

Of her work she says “These works are elevations of the rural; the everyday. I am fascinated by the local light which is ever changing in a day. They are snatches of place, daily rituals and people. These paintings are a visual diary of transient fleeting encounters built up over months. They are taken from memory and experience and are both representation and abstraction. I enjoy our preoccupation with the weather, the approaching storms which we endear with first names; passing showers, light and dark. It transforms these ordinary places into another world of colour and light”.