Award Winning Artist's Striking New Exhibition The Pondered Path Opens at Castle Espie Gallery
Multi award winning artist Millie Moore is impressing visitors to the Castle Espie with her striking exhibition The Pondered Path which recaptures the atmospheric experiences and the senses stored up from walking in her local landscape in rural County Down. The new exhibition, which runs until Sunday 28th June at the Castle Espie Gallery is a meditation on nature combining striking, abstract landscape canvases with a variety of sculptures using gathered foliage, natural dyes and handmade paper.
The Belfast born artist now lives on the outskirts of Banbridge in an area she constantly walks considering both its beauty and its industrial past. A member of Lisburn’s Market Square Studios, her oil paintings take the landscape as narrative. Questioning a sense of place, her work pushes the boundaries of oil painting employing oil bars and charcoal as drawing tools to manipulate the surface. The layers built up on the surface of the canvas hold early traces of charcoal, veiled with thin glazes of oil paint and layered with drawing marks of oil bars often floating on the surface. A good sense of colour reflects the ever changing hue observed through seasonal changes in the landscape.
Speaking at the opening of The Pondered Path, exhibiting artist Millie Moore said:
“Castle Espie is a unique place to visit and its gallery a gem for artists to show their work. Large bay windows provide a flood of natural light to view paintings at their best and marble fireplaces lend a platform for sculpture. My exhibition, inspired by a sense of place found walking in the landscape, sits well within this environment and allows me to show the work to its full potential.”
Kathryn Cochrane, Marketing and Communications Manager at Castle Espie said:
“Millie’s Pondered Path exhibition been really well received with the visitors' book bursting with comments such as beautiful, colourful, evocative, inspiring and thought provoking. Her vibrant oil paintings and natural sculptures have found their perfect synergy in the Castle Espie Gallery. It’s a must-see exhibition which runs until the 28th June and we are honoured to host such natural talent."
Graduating in 2013 from the University of Ulster with a first class honours degree in Fine Art, Millie was the recipient of the Carson McDowell Prize, the John and Rachel Turner Bursary, and her work has been purchased for the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and the University of Ulster collections.
Millie is currently working on sculptural forms in response to the natural world expressed through handmade paper and found materials.
The Pondered Path continues until Sunday 28th June 2015. The Castle Espie Gallery is free to visit and open from 10am to 5pm on weekdays and to 5:30pm on weekends.
