Cornelius Browne, A Garden a Stone’s Throw from the Sea – curated by Catherine Marshall

Painters and place are closely connected in Irish art and literature and Cornelius Browne is far from being an exception to this tradition. He is revered among a select group of art lovers for his inspired landscapes, painted entirely outdoors around his part of Donegal at all times of day and night across the seasons. For this exhibition, however, he has opted for something quite different. Exchanging long walks and expansive coastland for paintings nearer to home and the intimate wild garden he inherited from his father, now being planted afresh by his wife as she recovers from cancer. Each garden painting has a sea painting companion, each painting session in the garden incorporating a short walk across the road to paint the sea.

In his words ‘the to-ing and fro-ing is part of the artwork. I love the feel of going between the two places – the openness of the sea, the salty plight of the trees growing naturally near the shoreline, and then the trees planted with a kind of ragged design, the plants growing within the embrace of terracotta pots’. The paintings allow for deep psychological and allegorical resonances in the landscape in all weathers. Browne also likes to work on a small scale, admitting that he loves ‘the challenge of condensing as much feeling as I can into the smallest possible space’.

Cornelius Browne is a painter and writer, documenting the coastal area around Maghery in Donegal where he grew up. Following his graduation in fine art from the National College of Art & Design in Dublin, he worked at the Irish Museum of Modern Art before returning to Donegal. His paintings have been shown in solo exhibitions, Weathering and An Invite to Eternity, at the McKenna Gallery in Omagh, and All Nature has a Feeling at Regional Cultural Centre in Letterkenny, and in many group exhibitions around Ireland. Since 2016, he has tutored plein air workshops at Glebe House & Gallery in Churchill, Donegal and at the Dublin Plein Air Festival. He has worked in film as a production designer and screenwriter and has published fiction and poetry. He writes a regular column for The Visual Artists’ News Sheet, published by Visual Artists Ireland and is a contributor to Sunday Miscellany on RTÉ, Radio 1. He is currently working on his first book.

Dates & Times:

• Thursday 12th: 3pm – 5pm
• Friday 13th: 12pm-3pm, 5:30pm-7pm
• Saturday 14th: 12pm-4pm and 6:30pm-8:30pm
• Sunday 15th: 12:30pm-4pm