Hamilton Gallery 5^th – 28^th May 2016

http://hamiltongallery.ie/#/glow-emma-stroude-1/

‘These new works are born from my fascination with relationships between light, water and the landscape. Some of the paintings are animated by notions of speed, movement and travel while others focus on moments of stillness and quiet contemplation. In each work I attempt to capture the transformation of an ordinary scene caused by the presence of light and water in the atmosphere, to articulate and record in paint a moment of weather-driven drama or luminescent beauty that may otherwise fade and be lost.’

Emma Stroude 2015

 

‘To snatch from time the passionate transitory…’

Patrick Kavanagh

The painter has a few ancient skills to guide their response and Emma is a consumate painter; her antennae are always atuned to the one arresting image that cancels out all the others. Her work moves from tonal shading to cloudy atmospherics, not unlike those faraway Arcadian cloudscapes glimpsed in the backgrounds of old masterpieces by Titian or Goya, craft and composure are needed, and a bit of a break in the weather.

With Emma’s work we look out  on a symphonic Turner-like painterly vista, at the mercy of elements beyond our control, turbulent and storm thrown, we also find a breathing space in the meteorlogical chaos, a moment of repose, we find a kind of peace.

Emma frames those places for us, and with a sure, certain painterly touch, brings us back there again and again, reminding us what it’s like to be alive to that sudden illuminating moment, catching it before the glow fades.

                                                                                                              Cormac O’Leary   2016