About
Geraldine Doherty is a Galway based artist specialising in paint. She graduated with an honours degree in Fine Art from the Galway/Mayo Institute of Technology, and is also a graduate of the National University of Ireland, Galway. Her work to date has mainly been based on film especially the films of Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick. She is a prolific painter and has just completed a new body of work.
Her recent ethereal abstract work takes its cue from the natural environment. Visions of isolated eerie scenes are evoked through the use of translucent layers of paint and the shimmering movement of silhouettes. Colours move and flow and stain, achieving an end result similar to the "Bokasi" effect in Japanese prints.
The work is dreamy and is imbued with light and atmosphere. It is both familiar and otherwordly inviting the possibility of transcendence by contemplation. It provides us with a filmic version of life and questions our own mortality and how it paralells the fragility of life on our planet. Many of the images revolve around water, fish and boats which are symbolic of reflection, purification and transformation.
The paintings are quietly haunting and ghostly. The key to their impact is their very simplicity, so that the soft layers of colour and overall mystical effect immerses the viewer into the depths of the subconscious.