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06 Sept 2025
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06 Sept 2025
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Mary Fahy ‘Somethings up in Ardnaculla’ at The Leitrim Design House
The Leitrim Design House is excited to showcase a new exhibition of paintings by Mary Fahy on ARTWALL from this week until March 15.
This is a beautiful collection of landscape paintings by an award-winning Clare artist, created from her studio in Ennistymon on the Wild Atlantic Way. Using fluid, energetic brushwork with a natural muted palette, the artist captures the movement and drama in the West of Ireland.
Her unique visual language is evidently grounded in intuition, personal experience and direct observation. Mary’s current paintings explore ritual grief practices through the tradition of leaving tokens of remembrance at St. Brigid’s Holy Well, Liscannor. Co. Clare.
Her paintings aspire to reflect mortality, loss, hope, enduring memory and love. This exhibition, titled ‘Place’, is a series of landscapes that predate her Holy Well series yet comment on the traces left by people on the land.
“I’m interested in how we experience the landscape from the vantage point of the roadside as we drive past. We’re becoming more and more removed from nature,” Mary said.
The Irish landscape has been shaped by inhabitants since the first farmers arrived here. Fields, walls, hedges all bear the traces of the people who worked them. ”
“In this way, the theme of love and loss endures in my work. As I paint the misty haze, the dense hedges, I remember loved ones and their deep love of the land,” the artist added.
The artist’s passion for ‘Place’ shines through in her work. Mary’s current practice is kindly supported by the Clare Arts Office and the Kildare County Council.
She graduated from LSAD with 1st-class honours. Her degree show was awarded the Revenue Commissioners Purchase Prize and selected for The Young Contemporaries exhibition at Belltable Arts Centre. On completing her H. Dip in Art Education again with 1st class honours, she won the Larkin Memorial Award and the Irish Times Award. She has continued to be employed in art education in Ennistymon since 2003.
She was awarded the Clare Arts Office Bursary Residency Award in 2023 and the Glór Artist to Artist Mentorship with Vera Klute in 2022. Mary completed a mentorship with textile artist Laura Angell, supported by JCT and the Design and Crafts Council of Ireland 2023 and is currently completing a JCT DCCI mentorship with Ruth Duignan, LSAD.
Recently selected exhibitions include 2024: 126 Gallery Members Show, SULT Artist Collective Open Submission, 2023: RCPI ‘Climate and Health’, chosen by James Hanley RHA, Dunamaise Open, selected by Blaise Smith, RUA Red Spring Open Exhibition ‘Displacement and Belonging - Home’. 2022: ‘Equilibrium’ at Linenhall Arts Centre, Castlebar; ‘Stretched- The Art of Motherhood’ at The People’s Museum, Limerick; ‘Points of Perspective’ at Artlinks Fort Dunree.
Mary was an invited artist in the ‘Bullaí (Buoys)’ outdoor exhibition on Inis Oírr, 2023 and was twice shortlisted for the Markievicz Medal for Painting.
The Clare artist was also shortlisted for Pallas Studios PP/S Artist-Initiated Programme 2023, awarded project funding from Clare Arts Office and is a member of Spilt Milk Gallery, 126 Gallery, Ormston House, VAI and ATAI.
Mary facilitated a specially commissioned Artists in Schools collaboration with Jennie Guy (Art School), Mitch Conlon (Turner Prize-winning Array Collective), assistant curator Fiona Gannon, and artist James Moran, commissioned by Clare Arts Office.
She was an invited speaker for the Arts in Education Portal national conference 2023. Residency Bursary Award winner 2023 from Clare County Council. Cowhouse Studios residency, Wexford, 2023. Recent exhibition ‘Dabhach Bhríde – ar bhád go hInis Oírr (Brigid’s Well – By Boat to Inis Óirr’ with Frances Bermingham at Áras Éanna, Inis Oírr, 2023 featured on RTE Radio 1 Arena arts programme. The exhibition opens in Naas Cultural Centre in January 2024.
Mary is currently working towards an upcoming solo show in Portumna Castle OPW Gallery 2025.
The Leitrim Design House are delighted to exhibit the work of such an experienced artist. Place continues on ARTWALL until March 15.
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