Eveleen Power

The Irish expressionist painter Eveleen Power is noted for her powerful landscape and figurative works, as well as a range of more intimate compositions alluding to deeper emotional issues.

Her instinctive feeling for colour and exemplary treatment of light imbues each of her canvases with great power. One gets the feeling that she puts a huge amount of herself into each work, to the extent of draining herself completely.

This wholehearted commitment - which, let's face it, is what true expressionism is all about - is what raises Power above many of her contemporaries and makes her art special.

The Lookout, Dungarvan.

Born in Dungarvan, Power comes from a family of artists. Her father Sean de Paor, from whom she received her early training in drawing and painting, is a well known Irish landscape painter who has exhibited widely in the Waterford area, while her brother Dermot is a successful concept designer in Hollywood, Los Angeles, USA. In the late 1980s, Eveleen further developed her skills at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, before gaining experience in a diverse range of creative activities including theatre set-design, community art, and commercial design.

Over the past few years, she has worked from her own studio in Dungarvan. Her paintings have been shown in several solo shows in Co Waterford and at the Belltable Arts Centre in Limerick. Her 2008 exhibition schedule includes the Youghal Arts Festival (July) and the Adare Heritage Centre (August).

Gillian.

Working mostly in acrylics, Power has been influenced by a number of great artists including the Impressionist Mary Cassatt (1845-1926), the emotive Mexican painter Frida Kahlo (1907-54), the intimate colourist Howard Hodgkin (b.1932), as well as the Spanish Surrealist painter and sculptor Joan Miró (1893-1983) noted for his dreamy abstract works, and the everyday life artist and illustrator Norman Rockwell (1894-1978). These influences provide an insight into Power's artistic interests, which are mainly (but not exclusively) the expression of emotion through the use of symbols as well as colour and figures.

According to Power herself, the principal themes of her work are the natural landscape and the human figure. In addition, she is strongly drawn to the study of human facial expression and physical gesture, as well as the alluring if elusive force of yearning.

Loss and Hope.

The upshot of all this is a portfolio of quite different subject-matter and style, ranging from beautifully evocative realist landscapes - witness her superb depiction of light and shadow in 'The Lookout, Dungarvan', 'Co Waterford Mountains', and 'Blackwater River, Villierstown' - to Impressionist portraits like 'Gillian' and highly expressionist works such as 'Treewoman' and 'Loss and Hope'. Her mysterious Gauguin-like 'Storm' is especially striking.

This equal division of talent between realism and expressionism permits Power to reach a very wide audience, and on top of this one feels she is only just beginning to flex her creative muscles.

Already, her paintings are represented in several private and public collections including, the Department of Political Science and Sociology, National University of Ireland Galway.

Co Waterford Mountains.

Our Opinion

I can look at Power's paintings for hours. Is there anything more important than this?

To contact Eveleen Power, or to see more examples of her art, visit her website: www.eveleenpower.com

Review written by Neil Collins (Editor) (July 2008).

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Storm.

Seashine.

Blackwater River, Villierstown.

• For more about portraiture, see Irish Portrait Painters.
• For more information about visual arts in Ireland, see: Irish Art.
• For details of famous painters and sculptors from Ireland, see Irish Artists.

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