1st of April until April 15th and thereafter by appointment – 087 791 2337
Gallery hours: 1 – 6pm Wednesday to Saturday or by appointment.
A STILLNESS EXPANDED FEATURES A BODY OF NEW WORK BY AWARD-WINNING ARTIST, CECILIA DANELL RUNNING FROM APRIL 1ST – APRIL 15TH. THE WORK IS INSPIRED BY THE ARTIST’S INTEREST IN THE PUSH AND PULL OF THE NATURAL AND THE MAN-MADE.
The large-scale paintings by the Galway-based artist represents a glimpse of the forrested landscape where she grew up in Sweden, but they could be anywhere. Through use of colour, sci-fi graphical elements and the focus on remnants symbolising human presence, Danell’s paintings depict scenes that exist between truth and fiction, pointing to something else and sometimes upending the romantic notion of nature as an untended wilderness.
Much of the work was created during the pandemic, a time when many of us found our immediate landscapes both strange and familiar at the same time. Her paintings draw on how both we and our environment adapt, adjust and form new realities after seismic events. Each canvas represents a slice of a bigger world and gives a sense of a portal to a universe larger than what you can see.
‘Into the Woods’ oil and acrylic on canvas, 140 x 110 cm, 2021.
I spent November 2021 on an Invited Fellowship residency at Ballinglen Arts Foundation, north Mayo where I painter the landscape of the nearby glen. The above painting of the entrance into the sitka forest growing on the slope joined the Ballinglen Museum of Art Permanent Collection, and it is now on view to the public for the first time in the ‘Recent Acquisitions’ exhibition at the museum, curated by Founding Director Margo Dolan.
The exhibition opened on the 16th March and runs until the 30th May.
Artists: Kim Abraham, Gail Baar, Peter Brooke, Kathleen Buchanan, Ken Buhler, Patricia Burns, Liam Callaghan, Tom Climent, Cecilia Danell, Jon Eckel, Megan Eustace, Rick Fox, Evan Fugazzi, Logan Grider, Paul Hallahan, Mary Hambleton, Hollis Heichemer, Allyson Keehan, Maria Levinge, Aubrey Levinthal, Susan Maxfield, Ethan Murrow, John O’reilly, Thomas Sarrantonio, Wendy Seller, Gerda Teljeur, Jennifer Trouton, Lorna Watkins
I was featured on ‘Imeall’ TG4’s bilingual arts series earlier this week. Episode 7 aired on the 31st October and 1st November 2022. My segment can be watched back on Youtube above and the full series is currently available on the TG4 player. It is produced by Red Shoe Productions who visited my studio last spring when I was in the middle of my rug tufting project and also shot footage at my solo exhibition at Luan Gallery, which ran at the time. Thank you to Red Shoe Productions and TG4 for featuring me.
Cecilia Danell – Brush Lightly Through Fireweed Forests
8th September – 1st October
Reception Thursday 8th September at 6 pm
The Wood Between the Worlds, oil and acrylic on canvas, 190×140 cm, 2022
Cecilia Danell’s exhibition Brush Lightly Through Fireweed Forests encompasses large, hand-tufted rugs and paintings inspired by her own encounters with the landscape of the area in Sweden where she grew up. In her process based practice, research into landscape and the psychology of place is coupled with a strong interest in materiality and making. Treating the landscape as an extension of the Self, Danell’s research takes in classic speculative fiction and Science-Fiction novels, with special focus on how the natural world is rendered in these stories and how it ties in with the human urge to find solace in a primeval landscape, although wilderness is mostly a construct. The notion of constructing narratives particularly interests the artist and in her journeys through the real landscape she’s drawn to settings that have a theatrical, enchanted feel. Historical, water-filled mine holes could be portals into other worlds, a piece of driftwood resembles an ancient, petrified sea creature, there are thickets abundant with fireweed and a tree trunk blazingly illuminated by the winter sun. Although real locations act as the starting point, the process of selecting and rendering each scene creates something separate, more closely related to storybooks and dream imagery. The departure into large-scale rug tufting saw Danell convert her studio into a temporary tufting workshop for the duration of the spring, resulting in two hand-tufted works with a framing reminiscent of theatre scenery, where the tactility of the yarn adds another dimension to the rendering of moss and grasses. The scale of these new works; paintings and rugs, invite the viewer to step into the scene, finding themselves somewhere between reality and fiction.
Cecilia Danell is the 2022 recipient of the RHA Hennessy Craig Award for painting, the ESB Keating Award at the 190th RHA Annual Exhibition, a 2017 Arts Council Next Generation Award and the 2011 Wexford Arts Centre Emergence Award and has received several bursary and project awards from the Arts Council. Recent exhibitions include: ‘GENERATION2022: New Irish Painting’ Butler Gallery, Kilkenny (2022), ‘Parklife’ The Glucksman, Cork (2022), ‘Tactile Terrain’ (solo), Luan Gallery, Athlone (2022), The Hennessy Craig Award Exhibition, RHA, Dublin (2022), ‘I Trust The Quiet’ (solo), Burren College of Art Gallery, Co Clare (2021), ‘Mise en scène’, Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris (2021), I set a Bait for the Unknown’ (solo), Kevin Kavanagh, Dublin (2020), ‘In a Landscape’ (solo) Ashford Gallery, RHA, Dublin (2019), ‘Winter Wanderer’ (solo), Kevin Kavanagh, Dublin (2019), ‘Futures – Series 3 Episode 2’ RHA, Dublin (2018). Residencies include Ballinglen Arts Foundation (2021), Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris (2020) and the Nordic Artists’ Centre Dale, Norway (2016). Her work is in several public collections including the Arts Council, Trinity College, Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Galway City Council, Wexford County Council, Motala Municipal Council, Sweden and the Office of Public Works as well as private collections in Ireland, UK, Sweden, Canada, France and Norway. A book on Danell’s work with an essay by Cristín Leach was published by Kevin Kavanagh in 2021.
The artist would like to thank Connemara Carpets for help with mounting of the tufted rugs and the Arts Council for helping her fund equipment through the Agility Award.
Please join us for ‘In Conversation’ with Cecilia Danell and Cristín Leach on the 27th September at 6pm.
I’m delighted to announce that my painting ‘The Canopy Bearer’ has been acquired by The Glucksman for the University College Cork Art Collection. It was exhibited in ‘Parklife: Biodiversity in Contemporary Art’ at the gallery earlier this year, and has now found a permanent home as part of the UCC collection.
Administered and cared for by The Glucksman, the University College Cork art collection focuses on modern and contemporary Irish art. The works are sited throughout the campus to provide the UCC community and visitors with a first-hand encounter with original works of art.
‘The Canopy Bearer’ oil and acrylic on canvas, 114×162 cm, 2020.
I’m delighted to be featured in this painting exhibition at Butler Gallery, Kilkenny. The opening takes place 5-7pm on the 23rd April. The exhibition runs until the 10th July.
Butler Gallery is pleased to present GENERATION2022: New Irish Painting, a celebration of painting and of painters at work in Ireland today.
The exhibition is curated by Butler Gallery Director Anna O’Sullivan and includes the following eclectic group of 26 artists:
Helen Blake | Miranda Blennerhassett | Peter Bradley | Diarmuid Breen | Megan Burns | Serena Caulfield | Susan Connolly | Cecilia Danell | Mollie Douthit | Stephen Doyle | Gabhann Dunne | David Eager Maher | Fiona Finnegan | Deirdre Frost | Philip Gerald | Brian Harte | Sinead Lucey | Sinéad Ní Mhaonaigh | Róisín O’Sullivan | Jane Rainey | Sheila Rennick | Ciara Roche | Emma Roche | Salvatore of Lucan | Jennifer Trouton | Marcel Vidal
The works on view reflect a diversity of approach to picture making, from abstraction to figuration, to representational work embracing landscape and portraiture. Some paintings are incorporated into installations on the wall, some are free-standing in the middle of the gallery, but mostly the works are two-dimensional explorations of a variety of the passions, issues and concerns of the individual artists.
8th April – 10th July 2022. The Glucksman, Cork, Ireland.
Amber Broughton, Miriam de Búrca, Kari Cahill, Michael Canning, Cecilia Danell, Rachel Doolin, Gabhann Dunne, Martin Gale, Sean Hanrahan, Martin Healy, Peter Nash, Meadhbh O’Connor
Curated by the Glucksman curatorial team: Fiona Kearney & Chris Clarke.
Parklife presents the work of Irish artists who consider the biodiversity of the world around us, looking at how different forms of life thrive in the urban realm as well as in more remote environments.
The selected works range from detailed drawings of the various species of animals that make their home on the UCC campus to photographic studies of birds and plants that bring contemporary resonance to the pioneering work of Karl Blossfeldt on display in our Sisk gallery. The exhibition features a series of paintings of the Scots Pine, one of Ireland’s three native coniferous trees as well as research investigations into the ways in which communities are conserving seeds to protect food crops for future generations.
I’m really delighted to be the recipient of the 2022 Hennessy Craig Award for painting at the RHA, Dublin. The award exhibition, featuring 10 shortlisted painters, continues until the 27th March.
Bequest of the estate of Patrick Hennessy and Henry Robertson Craig.
The Hennessy Craig Award, in memory of H. Robertson Craig RHA and Patrick Hennessy RHA, was created through a generous bequest to the Academy by Henry Robertson Craig and the terms under which it is awarded are those specified in his will. The Award is open to any painter under the age of thirty-five exhibiting in the open submission section of the Academy’s Annual Exhibition. The painter must have studied at a recognised art college on the island of Ireland.
The Hennessy Craig Award is made on a biennial basis cumulating with an exhibition of short-listed artists, every two years, at which the recipient of the award will be announced.
In 2020, the Hennessy Craig jury shortlisted five eligible artists from the 190th RHA Annual Exhibition and an additional five artists have been shortlisted from the 191st RHA Annual Exhibition in 2021 and the recipient will be announced during the exhibition.
Shortlisted artists:
2020
Chanelle Walshe, Cecilia Danell, Tom McLean, Niamh Porter, Jane Rainey
2021
Eileen O’Sullivan, Ciara Roche, Fiach McGuinne, Owen de Forge, Sarah Wren Wilson
Each artist is invited to exhibit two new works and although considerate of the work submitted, the award will be made based on the overall practice of the artist. This exhibition will offer an unparalleled opportunity to view and for the discernible collector a chance to purchase, the very best work by some of Ireland’s most exciting young painters working today.
Delighted to have been invited to exhibit at Luan Gallery, Athlone this spring. My exhibition ‘Tactile Terrain’ will run in the main gallery from the 12th February – 3rd April. There will be a catalogue accompanying the three concurrent exhibitions available at the gallery.
The Artist’s Wellis an hour long weekly programme live at 10am on Saturday mornings via Zoom and subsequently archived on The Artist’s Well YouTube Channel. It provides viewers with an insight into the lives, work spaces and work practices of Artists around the world in order to inspire and support each other.
The Artist’s Well is a non-scripted, informal interview and studio tour format with the opportunity for viewers to ask questions at the end. The Artist’s Well is hosted by founder Alan Keane and participation is by invitation / recommendation only.
Each programme is archived on the Artist’s Well Youtube channel.
The opening of my exhibition at Burren College of Art on the 28th October also marked the launch of a publication on my work published by Kevin Kavanagh. The 48 page hardcover publication is designed by Peter Prendergast with a text by Cristín Leach and acts as a summary of my work of the past four years. It’s supported by Centre Culturel Irlandais and printed by art book specialists Cassochrome.
The book is available for purchase from the Contact section of this website, from Kevin Kavanagh in Dublin and will also be available from Temple Bar Gallery during the Dublin Art Book Fair (25th November – 5th December) online and in person.
I’m delighted to be included in this group show of Irish-based artists dealing with landscape in their work, curated by Anne Mullee. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue and runs until the 18th December.
Centre Culturel Irlandais is delighted to present Mise en scène, a joint exhibition of paintings, drawings and sculptural works by Swedish artist Cecilia Danell, who is based in Ireland, and Denmark-based Irish artist Eamon O’Kane. Both explore encounters with landscape. Their approaches upend romantic notions of nature as untended wilderness by drawing attention to human activity, be it in the shape of decaying remnants, architectural constructions or treasured trees. Places become imbued with artifice in a dialectic relationship with the environment which these works represent in all their theatricality.
Irish Culture Night 17 September,
5.30pm: Artist Talk
6.30 – 8pm Opening reception
8pm Gig in the courtyard with Cecilia Danell’s band A Lilac Decline (featuring Cecilia Danell, Brian Kelly and Keith Wallace)
I’m really delighted to be the recipient of the ESB Moran Award and Silver Medal for an Outstanding Artwork in the 190th RHA Annual Exhibition. The award is kindly sponsored by ESB Networks Ireland in memory of painter Sean Keating.
In the Birch Plantation, oil and acrylics on canvas, 95×130 cm, 2019.
I am also honoured to be one of five shortlisted artists for the RCSI Art Award in association with the Irish Times. Past winners of the award include Remco de Fouw (2016), Miranda Blennerhasset (2017), Amelia Stein (2018) and Mary A Kelly (2019). I am shortlisted alongside Dominique Crowley, Colin Martin RHA, John Rainey and Niamh Smith. The award winner will be announced in December. The RCSI Art Award was established in 2016 to celebrate the common heritage of RCSI (Royal College of Surgeons Ireland) and the RHA (Royal Hibernian Academy) and the long-standing association between art, medicine and well-being.
I am delighted to announce that the Arts Council of Ireland have recently acquired ‘The Octopus Salt Lick’ from my August solo exhibition at Kevin Kavanagh Gallery for the Arts Council Collection. www.artscouncil.ie. The Arts Council Collection has been acquiring exceptional works of Irish art for 58 years and counting. It is one of the most important collections in Ireland. Because the Arts Council aims to support artists as well as engage the public, all of the pieces are being collected while the artists are still alive and working.
‘The Octopus Salt Lick’ – oil and acrylics on canvas, 120×120 cm, 2019.
The protection of Swab participants is our top priority, and therefore, exploring formats and ways to respond to the new reality, we proudly present an exclusively digital edition.
Swab has created a 3D virtual environment through which visitors can walk the corridors of the Italian Pavilion as if they were at the physical event, and can do so through any mobile device or computer, without having to leave home. Immersive technology and artistic quality are two of the distinctive qualities of this new edition which, from October, will be accessible to everyone via a free, international App.
At the same time, for the second consecutive year, Swab will have online coverage of Artsy, which will present the artistic proposals of the edition on its digital platform.
As this is an extraordinary edition, Swab 2020 will be held over two weeks, from 1 to 15 October 2020, and up to 70 international galleries will take part.
‘The Light Falls’ – oil and acrylics on canvas, 130×170 cm, 2019.
6th – 29th August, Tuesday to Saturday 11am to 5pm.
The artist will be present in the gallery from 12-7pm on Thursday the 6th August.
Cecilia Danell’s paintings are organic, magically playful and densely rich; however, they are also curiously geometric and linear, working off layers of constructed plains and improvised riffs. The artist understands the weight of colours and their manual application. She has been experimenting with different coloured grounds, underpainting the canvas in washes of pink, blue and green. These ghosts of colour infiltrate the atmosphere and character of her depicted scenes. Here and there, we observe references to photography, echoing the distortion of snapshots, demarked by blue borders. Moreover, there is a filmic quality to her paintings, as if she is using the richly saturated hues of early Technicolor to destabilise ‘the real’. Like celluloid film, coated with a light-sensitive gelatin emulsion, Danell’s painted layers find joy in the luminous material properties of oil paint. Diluted mineral spirits seep downward and into the warp of the canvas, resisting sections of thick impasto, rendered in seemingly effortless brushstrokes. Pushing the paint around, wet on wet, occasionally hard and dry, she senses the paint itself, its plasticity, flow and reticence, as it changes from pigment to pigment. Rather than building up the composition in full layers, she works on small sections, preserving and abstracting the drips, with this dappled under-painting becoming another colour map. Borders mark the interrelationship of colour and form, revealing contractions that echo the artist’s deep reading of place. Danell has the confidence in her work to make seemingly counterintuitive decisions. She is making new discoveries as she proceeds, and these are evident in her painting. Extract from the text ‘I set a Bait for the Unknown’ by Sarah Searson.
Recent exhibitions include:’In a Landscape’ (solo) at the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA), Dublin (2019), ‘Winter Wanderer’ (solo) at Kevin Kavanagh, Dublin (2019), ‘Futures – Series 3 Episode 2’ at the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA), Dublin (2018), BEEP Painting Biennial, Swansea, UK (2018), ‘The Last Wilderness’ (solo) at The Dock, Carrick-on-Shannon IE (2017) and Galway Arts Centre IE (2017). Residencies include Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris (2020) and the Nordic Artists’ Centre Dale, Norway (2016). She was a 2017 recipient of the Arts Council Next Generation Award and has received several Arts Council Bursaries and Project Awards as well as the Visual Artists Ireland & Suki Tea Art Prize (2019) and the Wexford Arts Centre Emergence Award (2011). A publication on Danell’s work with an essay by Sue Rainsford was launched in March 2017. Her work is represented in the collections of the Office of Public Works, Trinity College Dublin, Kelly’s Hotel, Rosslare, Wexford County Council, Galway County Council and Motala Municipal Council, Sweden as well as private collections in Ireland, UK, Sweden and Norway.
Kevin Kavanagh Gallery are running a series of online exhibitions in the viewing room on the gallery website. From the 20th May – 2nd June I will be showing a series of notebook watercolours made at home during lockdown.
Kevin Kavanagh Gallery will present work by four gallery artists at the London Art Fair, Islington in January. They are Cecilia Danell, Joe Scullion, Stephanie Deady and Margaret Corcoran.
You can find Kevin Kavanagh Gallery at booth P19 in the Art Projects section of the fair. For further information see the London Art Fair WEBSITE.
‘Our Choice Our World’ opened in Dunamaise Arts Centre Portlaoise Co. Laois on Friday 4th of October. The exhibition was curated by young students of 5th and 6th class from Scoil Bhride Primary School in Mountrath Co. Laois. These young creatives selected art works from Kevin Kavanagh’s new Store Room feature on the gallery’s website. There was great discussion and debate before the students came to their final selection. Topics of interest included landscape, place, animals and the environment and this is reflected throughout the exhibition. The exhibition runs until the 9th November.
Thanks to Dunmaise Arts Centre, Laois Arts Office and Creative Ireland Laois for funding the exhibition and making the project possible.
Selected Artists: Dermot Seymour, Stephen Loughman, Paul McKinley, Kathy Tynan, Nevan Lahart, Ulrich Vogl, Cecilia Danell, Oliver Comerford, Diana Copperwhite, Paul McKinley, Sonia Shiel, Robert Armstrong and Michael Boran.
I was recently invited by the editors of West of Ireland-based poetry magazine Skylight 47 to be featured artist for issue 12 of the magazine and I was very happy to accept. It was launched on the 8th September and features my painting ‘Inside a Shadow’ on the front and back cover as well as a few more of my paintings throughout the magazine. Issues are on sale through their website and are also available from Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop, Galway and Books Upstairs, Dublin.
I’m thrilled to announce that I’ve been awarded a 2 month residency at the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris and The Visual Artists Ireland Suki Tea Art Prize which funds the residency. I can’t wait to live and work in the centre of Paris and view lots of art. Thank you to Centre Culturel Irlandais, Suki Tea and Visual Artists Ireland for the opportunity! https://www.centreculturelirlandais.com/en/residencies/artistes-en-residence/annonces
“Visual Artists Ireland and Suki Tea are delighted to announce Cecilia Danell as the winner of this years Suki Tea Art Prize.
As winner of the Suki Tea Art Prize Cecilia will have a two month, fully-funded, artist residency at the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris, including flights, accommodation, studio space, a monthly stipend, and superb networking opportunities. The prize aims to provide artists with an opportunity to respond to a new environment and develop new work.” https://visualartists.ie/news/vai-news/cecilia-danell-wins-vai-suki-tea-art-prize-2019/
I’m also very happy to have been awarded a 2019 Bursary from the Irish Arts Council which will fund my work for the coming year. I look forward to getting stuck into new work and research after a busy few months of exhibitions and am very grateful for the support!
25TH October – 25th November 2018
Custom House Studios & Gallery
Westport Quay
Co.Mayo
A conversation with some of the artists will be held on Thursday the 25th October at 5.30pm.
Sonia Shiel, Nevan Lahart, Sinéad Ní Mhaonaigh, Kathy Tynan, Aileen Murphy, Marcel Vidal, Stephanie Deady, Stephen Loughman, Lesley-Ann O’Connell, Cecilia Danell, William O’Neill, Pat Byrne, Salvatore of Lucan, Robert Armstrong, Mark Swords, Dermot Seymour, Julia Dubsky and Joe Scullion.
Island Life will have it’s second outing later this month in Custom House Studios Gallery, Westport. The exhibition will include some new works by previously exhibited artists as well as the addition of Nevan Lahart, Aileen Murphy, Dermot Seymour, and Sinéad Ní Mhaonaigh.
Painting exists in an increasingly sophisticated visual world that sometimes seems to have a diminishing interest in the possibilities of paint. Island Life is concerned with the idea that, within the medium of paint there are opportunities for the individual to question the situation we live in and the resources we share. The paintings in this exhibition address the human condition and each of the artists suggests the capacity of the medium of paint to encompass both personal and universal concerns.
I’m delighted to have been selected to exhibit in the 2018 Beep Painting Prize exhibition at Swansea College of Art, Wales. Part of the city-wide Beep painting Biennial. Judges for this year’s prize show were Andrew Stitt and Sue Williams. Launched in 2012, beep (biennial exhibition of painting) is a contemporary painting prize drawing artists from all over the world. Beep supports imaginative and vibrant practice in contemporary painting & returns with an expanded programme of satellite painting led exhibitions, residencies and symposiums around the main prize show in partnership with Swansea galleries and educational organisations.
