‘Dawn to Dusk’ exhibition captures the beauty of Co. Down
On Saturday 27 July at 2pm, the Art Gallery at WWT Castle Espie Wetland Centre will be offering a unique and exciting opportunity to view ‘Dawn to Dusk’ art exhibition by local artists Hilary Hinds and Jackie Crooks.
This exhibition is a collaborative celebration of the landscape. capturing the changing mood of the landscape through the transience of light, weather and seasons and to depict the muck and murkiness, and the subtlety of colour too, that is so much a feature of Northern Irish weather and landscape.
Local artist Jackie Crooks highlighted, “for this show I spent time cycling and driving around Co. Down, concentrating on localities around Castle Espie, Mahee Island, Nendrum and Sketrick. Paintings have been based on first light and dusk encounters. Including an evening race at Downpatrick earlier in June. In other pieces I concentrated on capturing the feeling of light at the turning of the day, “Dawn at Nendrum” began at 7am on a September morning, “The Trees” were an evening painting in winter. The still lives were painted in morning light coming through my kitchen window.”
Jackie has showcased her fantastic work with the Royal Ulster Academy, Cavehill Gallery in Belfast, Iontas in Sligo, Royal Hibernian Academy Dublin and Sporting Art, Adams, Dublin.
Artist Hilary highlighted, “Castle Espie Art Gallery is a perfect place to showcase landscape paintings and it has been an enjoyable experience producing this entirely new body of work which, I hope is sympathetic to the Centre. My gouache paintings are intended to convey some of the farmer’s struggle and triumphs through changing seasons and times of day.”
Hilary went onto say, “The landscapes in this exhibition have been inspired by the Co. Down landscape in all its subtle beauty. Fields are especially interesting to me because of the effect of varying light conditions and seasonal changes and also because of the changing landscape responding to Man’s intervention. During the winter months when the skies were quite flat and almost white, I would have expected to see very little colour; the colourless skies had the effect of making greens much more vibrant yellow and browns even more burgundy in colour; morning mists were pale blue when the sun broke through. I learned to love what I had previously detested the appearance of, the dark muddy fields recently turned over for the winter, took on a new appeal.”
Hilary was a former teacher at Belfast Metropolitan College until 2011 and is now a self-employed tutor. Hilary’s work has been featured in Ulster Society of Women Artists exhibition at The Tower, Bangor, Tom Caldwell Gallery, Engine Room Gallery. Hilary was also invited by Belfast Public Libraries to showcased at Cregagh Library back in 2012.
T
he exhibition will run until Sunday 27 August 2013. The gallery is open daily from 10am to 5pm and free to visit.
