Judy O'Sullivan - Clare

Irish artist Judy O'Sullivan, Clare

Judy O'Sullivan is based in north Clare and has exhibited regularly over the past ten years.

Solo exhibitions include Trace, drawing photography print, Courtyard Gallery, Cork, 2011; dress drawings, 2009, drawing media installation, Courthouse Gallery, Clare; Njobvu African Village, Malawi 2008, photographic installation, Courthouse Gallery, Ennistymon, Co Clare; Mysteries must be our way... drawings and shrines, 2006, Tallaght Community Arts Centre. She has also been selected for a number of group exhibitions in Ireland and France including: Power of Local, 2011, Ennistymon, Co Clare; Ansin Anois, Courthouse Artists, 2007; Cork Art Trail, 2006, Triskel Arts Centre; An Bhoireann, 2006, Galerie Poemie, Lot, France. Iontas 2005, Sligo Art Gallery.

She makes art that engages with her immediate environment focusing on the familiar, a chair, footprints , a shadow on a wall, marks of everyday life, often unnoticed, to which we give it little attention. A central aspect in the making of the work is the exploration of the Japanese idea, 'mono no aware', literally 'the pathos of things', the awareness of their impermanence and transience and the wistfulness of their passing. Through photographic documentation, drawing and painting, she explores an idea, experimenting with drawing processes, extending boundaries through collage, text, print and installation.

'Making a drawing holds onto the momentary experience, freezing the moment. The drawing holds our reflections and feelings making something concrete of the encounter with the object.' The resultant work varies in scale from tiny drawings on canvas and paper to a large-scale wall drawing made in situ, hovering between the abstract and the representational.